ETMA Matters

Anna's reflection paper

2005-10-04T21:57:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-22T06:17:00.000+08:00

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.

2005-09-20T19:47:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-19T22:21:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-19T11:50:00.000+08:00

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)

2005-09-14T21:09:00.000+08:00

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.)

2005-09-12T23:28:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-12T21:14:00.000+08:00

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)

2005-09-12T15:35:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-11T16:01:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-10T22:27:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-07T18:09:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-04T21:20:00.000+08:00

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

2005-09-01T12:29:00.000+08:00

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

2005-08-30T07:53:00.000+08:00

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

2005-08-28T14:50:00.000+08:00

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/

2005-08-27T23:50:00.000+08:00

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^

2005-08-27T15:43:00.000+08:00

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.

Wanda’s Reaction Paper

2005-08-25T01:06:00.000+08:00

Three teaching techniques are adopted to help develop students’ speaking abilities, which are tongue twisters, short short story, and guided role play. The teaching goal is to enhance students’ creative skills and to encourage students to use their critical thinking skills as well.

A. Teaching Tongue Twisters
Student Level: 6th-8th graders
Teaching Procedure:
1. Start with some well-known tongue twisters and have students repeat after the teacher first slowly and then faster and faster.
2. The teacher asks some volunteers to read the tongue twisters really fast.
3. Then, give students some time to work with one partner. Students with their partner practice the tongue twisters together. Fast speed and clear pronunciation are required.
4. After that, the teacher calls names to read the tongue twisters.
5. Then challenge the students to write their own tongue twisters. The teacher provides a model to get them start.
* Nouns - use at least one (Betty)
* Verbs - use at least one (bought)
* Adjectives - use several (brainy, billion, big, Buicks, black)
* Adverbs - use at least one (busily)
* Prepositional Phrases - use at least one (by the bay)
(Brainy Betty busily bought a billion, big, black Buicks by the bay. )
6. Have students write several and let them go through the peer editing process.

Tongue twisters help to facilitate students’ pronunciation and articulation. They provide phonics reinforcement through repetition of consonants, consonant blends, vowel sounds and digraphs. They also exercise physical articulation and auditory and visual discrimination, stringing together words that are nearly alike (Maffett & Wagner). Students, creating their own tongue twisters, not only have fun with this creative writing activity, but they also review several parts of speech.

B. Short Short Story
Student level: High School
Teaching Procedures:
1. The teacher gives students a story. Students read individually, selecting their responses, and then are moved into small groups and check their answers.
2. Students share their reasons why they select the answers.
3. Next, move students to new groups. Students share their answers and reasons but don’t have to agree at this point.
4. Then, students are asked to return to the original groups where they must share their answers and each group must come to an agreement.
5. Finally, the groups place all the answers on the broad and then the teacher and the students go over each group’s reason and discuss the correct answers.

In order for real communication to take place, language activities should allow for a certain amount of choice and openness. The student-centered activity increases group discussion and negotiation. The negotiation and discussion process help students to focus on the meaning instead of the form. When students pay greater attention on understanding and communication than grammatical correctness, their oral fluency and creative abilities are thus stimulated.

C. Guided Role Play
Student level: High School
Teaching Procedures:
1. The teacher suggests a conversational situation involving two people.
2. The teacher provides the students some guides which direct students to
communicate through the suggestions. The guide is constructed by using
“Say that…”, “Ask if”, etc.
Example:
Situation:
‘B’ promised to lend ‘A’ a textbook yesterday.
‘A’ plans to study it this evening.
(1)
A: Ask if B has remembered the textbook.
B: Say you have forgotten. Apologize and say you didn't forget deliberately.
(2)
A: Show you are not very happy. Explain that you need the book to do a report.
B: Explain why you forgot.
(3)
A: Say you won't ask B again!
B: Say you think A is being unreasonable.
(4)
A: Agree. Apologize.
B: Suggest A asks someone else for the book.

3. Students do the role play with their partner. They have to take the roles the other way round the second time.
4. Then, volunteers are asked to perform the conversation.
5. More pairs take turns to perform for the class.
6. The teacher comments on the students’ performances.

Role-playing provides a purpose for learners to use their oral language and develop crucial thought process. Petty and Jensen (1980) maintain that “creative dramatics fosters creativity in language, thinking, uses of the voice, and body movement.” (p. 308) Besides, working with “the real thing” encourages and motivates learners, shows the relevance of what they are learning, and prepares them for real language use outside the classroom. Role-playing allows learners to develop the ability to use language and creatively and see the meaningfulness of learning the language.

All the three activities help to promote students’ participation and cooperation, to reduce stress and individual anxiety and to focus on the students’ creative abilities.

Reference
Moffet, J. & Wagner, B. J. (1983) Student-centered language arts and reading, K-13 : a handbook for teachers. Boston : Houghton Mifflin.
Petty, W. T., & Jenson, J. M. (1980) Developing children’s language. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Add Links to Your Bloger Page

2005-08-22T08:40:00.000+08:00

Don't forget to add links to your blogger page. Go back through the entries here at ETMA Matters and note what sort of links you should have. The original assignment briefing is here. At least one link should go back to ETMA Matters though. You are encouraged to maintain a blog with your own classes, if you wish.

- Dr. Phillips

Interactive Drama--a complex network of communication

2005-08-15T21:29:00.000+08:00

Hi, there! Sorry for not being able to attend the class of the second play. What a loss! You said that it was interesting. So, I can only give reflections about thre first one. For the first ID, I was quiet confused about what's going on because there were so many characters and even more information. I wasn't in the right direction in the beginning, and after the whole process, I had no idea who the bad guys really were. In such kind of play, how to gather useful information is quite important; however, how to delete the useless or distractive information is even more important. It also takes us a lot of practice and efforts to master all the skills involved. I did learn a lot from the process of conversation through communicating, and negotiating with each other.

Reflection on Interactive Drama

2005-08-11T13:31:00.000+08:00

After trying my hand at ID, I knew I’ve found another teaching alternative for my students to have fun with. In class, when we were busy being somebody else, we forgot the language forms and spoke faster to get our message across to the other interlocutors. ID took full advantage of the features of unscripted play and the curiosity of human beings. We were all too eager to solve the mystery in class so we created our own line and speech. According to Livingstone (1938), unlike the traditional play-acting, students can determine what they want to say and simulation is fully developed.
In my own language classroom, I would use problem-solving format to highlight the playfulness of ID and I would design different functions of the language, including greeting, persuading, complaining, agreeing, disagreeing, expressing an opinion, etc. What’s more important, due to the lack of sufficient vocabulary and background knowledge, I would try to supply my students with necessary vocabulary and phrases prior to the ID, so that they may feel more empowered and a sense of achievement during the activity.
I think ID is really workable as long as necessary modification is made to fit into the actual language level of the students. If we have to teach a language efficiently, why not do it interestingly and interactively? I guess ID is one of the shortcuts we can take to bring our students both effect and fun.
Welcome to my blog: www.laurainetma.blogspot.com

2005-08-10T08:29:00.000+08:00

Claire's Reflection on ID
What an interesting form of role-play! I am not a person who can act naturally. In fact, I tried hard to pretend I were the prince in the Fairy Tale Mermaid when I was a freshman in college. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a disaster. Afterwards, I seem to have a fear of acting on stage. I don't know why it is so difficult for me to pretend that I am someone else. Maybe I am not creative enough, I guess.
However, in the last two experience of playing interactive drama. It didn't scare me that much. For the first ID, honestly speaking, when Dr. Phillips said something about drama, I started to get nervous and worried. Fortunately, I played a lawyer who could just give some useful information for her client. That's a good start for me. It's not that scary anyway. I told myself.
For the second time, I played Dorothy Oatman, the mother of Annie and wife of Peter. It seems that she is a really important suspect of murderer. I read her information carefully for fear that I might miss something. Besides, I didn't know what I should tell others. It's terribly uncomfortable to hold the secrets. Other people just didn't ask me questions. I couldn't help but let my own secrets out. That made me feel wonderful. All of a sudden, people are interested in my story. At that time, I just wanted to get my meaning across and started to talk without translation in my mind. That feels great.
For me, I am especially interested in finding out who the murderer is. Like Monica, I couldn't figure out the real murderer. However, I believe it's because of our inexperience in playing this. If we have more chances doing this, I am confident to say I will spot the murderer.

We have many roles to play in our life

2005-08-09T23:10:00.000+08:00

We have many roles to play in our life
After playing the second ID" Who is the killer?", I felt all my pressure,all of a sudden, was flying away and my whole body became comfortable and light. At that moment, I had forgotten the inaccessible SAS that caused me headache that morning. By playing out the emotion of the role, your imagery or imagination have been guided into another world and your focus is only on the play.
Also, during the play, I really didn't mind if my English grammar in the discourse is perfectly right, instead, I only cared about the role I played and the purpose I had to finish.Whom am I going to talk with? What's my porpose ? How can I influence the outcome in some way? What are the characteristics I should have in my role? All of the thinkings form out the lines I got to say in the play.
Like the journey programme in Africa, playing in ID, to some degree, really can release our inner emotion in an indirect way. In the classroom, we will have some
juvenile delinquents who also have some problem with his or her emotion, owing to disfunctional families or low accomplishment. It ocuurs to me that maybe ID is a good suggestion to create a context for them to release their emtion and feeling. I
believe ID is more useful than just sitting in the consulting room and encouraging them to talk out their problem.
Since we have so many roles to play in our real life- a teacher and student, a daughter and daughter- in- law, a wife, even a mother- our lives will be flourished through trying best to ply out these roles, just us we did in the interactive drama.
http://yuhweitseng.blogspot.com/

Pearl's Response to Interactive Drama

2005-08-08T21:58:00.000+08:00

What an amazing experience! While playing, time passed without our knowledge because the plots of those two dramas were so appealing. In the two interactive dramas, my role is not the most suspicious one, so I was not the center of attention. I mean I was not the most suspicious one. I managed to mingle and talk with others. To me, those who are extroverted may get more chances to talk than those who are not. This gives me a deep impression what I need to do when we plan a drama. Each one should have, at least we should try, an equal weight. Besides, try to give the most suspicious roles to those students who are quiet. I do remember Dr. Phillips once mentioned that the planning of interactive drama should be very careful. The designer should attend to every role, to give every role an equal chance to attract others' curiosity. Otherwise, some roles may be neglected by others because he or she is a weak suspect. This is the classroom main teaching point: every student has to talk. With this in mind, I think every student can learn something while having fun.
Interactive drama can be used in senior high schools, but not in vocational high schools. Those students who can carry out this kind of activity should have certain level of speaking ability. If students here in Taiwan are free of burden coming from entrance exams, I think they will learn English happily through activities such as interactive dramas.

ID is the best speaking activity ever

2005-08-08T19:25:00.000+08:00

Dear classmates,
In the beginning of the course, I remember Dr. Phillips telling us about the 'conscious levels' of using a language. The less conscious a speaker is of what he is going to say or how, the better he'll perform naturally. I think the theory is realized through interactive drama that we have just gone through. It's amazing that when all I care about is to get my meaning across and nothing else, I say the most in a native-like discourse. To forget about myself and only care about expressing myself is a thrilling experience for me. I am suddenly transformed into 'American' state of mind. I believe to stay in that state of mind for an enough long time my English will be passed for native-like.
It's not an impossible thing that we set up an ID club at the school we teach after we go back in September. The fun will be for both us teachers and the students. It only takes one period of class a week and the students will get high, so high that they'll forget what it's like to fear speaking in English. What an experience it will be! But I just don't know why ID has such a pull for speakers at present. It's something worth my exploring!

An Exciting Experience!

2005-08-08T01:07:00.000+08:00

After attending interactive dramas, I have to admit that they are so exciting and creative that they really capture my interest! Especially the second play on last Wednesday, each of the actor owned one secret and very few clues. Therefore, everyone has to find out who the murderer is by exchanging information and rumors with one another again and again , which not only created a wacky world interweaved by truth fiction but also brings me to an authentic English-speaking environment. However, since the girl I played grows up in a very complicated surroundings, I felt it's very difficult for me to play the role sucessfully, for I need to talking about a couple of embarrassing subjects during the play.
As for my future teaching plan of the ID, 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, being an English teacher of a girls’ senior high school, since how to prompt my shy, passive students to speak more spontaneously in class has already become my problem for a long time, I need to make some adjustments of the existing playwright to get my students more involved in the ID. Besides, although they may take highly interest about some controversial plots, I’ll try to avoid some two abnormal 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 motivated to learn English well through the performance.
This is my blogger: http://josephineswonderland.blogspot.com/Just feel free to exchange your feedback with me, and I'm truly looking forwad to your message!

Intelligent way to acquire English-- ID ^_^y

2005-08-07T01:49:00.000+08:00

After experiencing ID twice, I profoundly fell in love with interactive drama. Never do I know learning English could be so absorbing and exciting.

The reason I like it so much lies in the complex and tense plots as well as a variety of perspectives and personalities comprising the story's depth and width. Every actor just uses his own way to express the role without much restriction. Though the majority of the stories reflects ugly sides of life which seem distressing and uncomfortable, those incidents do exist in our real life. Yes, drama resembles our life. As we can see those society news, they just abound with similar stories. Therefore, rather than rejecting them instantly, it may be worthy nurturing the healthy and open-minded attitude to figure out how to interface the darkness and exploring the bright and active meaning of our life simultaneously. Learning can be achieved by roleplaying.

Except the charisma of drama, I found ample educational value of interactive drama including the improvisational dialogues which stimulate our quick thinking and unconsciousness in the language, authentic communicative situations that create natural and meaningful conversation, and the engagement of participants which motivate learners implicitly and explicitly. Interactive drama not only interacts interpersonally but aslo proceeds intrapersonally.

In addition to the above reasons, I enjoy the process that makes me "think". During the second interactive drama, I played the role of the police officer who had to strike out ideas to capture the suspect. So I planed what to ask and recorded everyone's interview just like what a real cob does. After that, I compared the records to find further clues. Anyway, I was so eager to find out the murderer though I failed at last. (Actually, I didn't interview Peter at all because I directly went to people with higher possibilities acording to the limited time which was a major wrong judgment) During the process, I conceived of reasonable ways to deal with the touchy story which I used to think rarely. In spite of the failure, I came to realize there is some unnoticed space in my thinking calling for thorough and considerate observances. It's quite amazing that ID teaches me how to think completely.

As regards the application of ID, it is not an easy job to put it into practice in elementary school since young learners' command of English may not be good enough to play the roles. However, I hope doing the following things will promote the effects of ID in elementary schools. First of all, regarding to the origins of the stories, it would be better to collect stories from fairy tales or fables with short and simple plots as well as positive value of life. Next, teachers may assign students into heterogeneous groups in which teachers assign roles according to learners' language abilities and personality. Then teachers step by step instruct students with a clear direction because young learners always behave unimaginably such as emotional problems, shyness, etc. What's more, it is better to prepare the costumes, music, and props which may prompt kids into the stories more easily. Last but not the least, teachers should always keep encouraging students and provide them with instant support to help them involve in the game.

*Welcome to Vera's blog~ hope to listen to different voice!!! ^_^
http://verahan99.blogspot.com/

Selena's Feedback

2005-08-06T11:32:00.000+08:00

Dear All,

I played the role of Ursula on Monday's Iinteractive Drama (ID) class. I felt sorry for her because I failed to play her part well. Actually I had ruined her reputation and her live. It is partly because I did not grasp the gist of this form of drama since it was a brand new experience for me. However, the biggest reason is that good people always suffer.
Ursula is a person of integrity from my interpretation of this character. She is supposed to be the most trusted member of her family. She has access to her sister and her niece's secrets but I think it would never be her intent to take advantage of them.
That was exactly why she (I) failed to defend herself (myself) because she was totally stunned by the sudden attack from her brother. So, my dear professor and classmates, please remember. When someone (like me) blinks her eyes or crosses her arms, she is not necessarily telling a lie.
Interactive Drama somehow reflects the real life. We can see from Ursula's example that often upright people may be wrongly accused. What Ursula is concerned is not the money that she did not inherit but her innocence. Am I taking it too seriously?
Interactive Drama is too complicated to be applied to the elementary teaching settings. However, it is so fascinating once you get involved in it. On Wednesday's class, I played the role of Annie. I have done a good job this time. Although she was of great suspicion, I defended her quite well. Next time I'd like to try the character of a bad guy. I think I will enjoy setting people up and fanning the flames of disorder.

Megan's response to the Interactive Drama

2005-08-05T22:10:00.000+08:00

With the introduction and initial involvement of the Interactive Drama, (ID) I really looked foreword to the coming of Wednesday because we were informed of another ID. On Wednesday, we still had lots of fun as last time, but somehow I felt a little bit uneasy in the process of the ID probably because of the role I played. I was assigned the role of Peter, who was the murderer of his good friend, Joseph. In order not to be identified, I had to lie. As I was trying to figure out how to lie to people suspicious of me, the film shown to us last week about the characteristics of liars kept appearing in my mind, reminding me of what liars tend to do. So I had to act the other way out. I intentionally avoided blinking my eyes or crossing my arms when talking to people for fear that I might be identified. Besides, I tried hard to make up stories to cover my lies. The more I talked to people, the more lies I told because I had to constantly use one lie to cover another lie. It’s a real challenge to be a liar like Peter, especially for an honest person like me. To my surprise, not many people found me suspicious. Most of them seemed to be guided to the wrong direction by those misleading clues. I think it’s really difficult to create a successful ID because many elements or factors need to be taken into account. If there are too many misleading clues involved, the participants may fail to figure out whodunit, thus feeling frustrated. On the contrary, if the plot is too simple, they feel bored. Anyway, it’s always hard to strike a balance.
I would be interested in applying the ID to my freshman students in senior high but I think several adjustments should be made before the application. First, I have to revise the script a little bit to make an easy-to-understand copy for my students. Besides, I have to be very careful in choosing the plot to ensure that there is no violence or sex-related issues involved. More importantly, I will divide the students into groups of three, who play the same role and work together to undertake the task.

Please feel free to visit my blog website at :http://meganlinetma.blogspot.com/2005/07/httpwww.html

Joyce's feedback

2005-08-04T22:13:00.000+08:00

Let me tell the experience when I first played the interactive drama. I got the character of Steven. I just knew Steve wanted to help find out who was the murder. At first, I was not quite involved in this role. There was to much information that I didn’t know and was not provided in my notes. I was wondering in my mind that what were the words I could say and I shouldn’t say in order to protect myself. Later on, as I interacted more with other characters, I got more used of the whole situation and knew how to react when people asked me questions like “Are you a drunker?” and “How do you support your life since you have no job?”
Besides speaking English in a more authentic way, I also realize in this game there are a lot of social interactions between characters. I guess if a person is more socially mature or sophisticated, maybe he or she will be more involved in the drama. I think role-playing is also a way to give participants a chance to stand in someone else’s shoes and foster their social interaction skills.
I like the idea of interactive drama that it elicits spontaneous language from students. I will adopt it in my classroom and make it much easier for my students. I teach in a senior vocational high school. (You can visit the website of my school. http://www.hwaivs.ylc.edu.tw/ ) Students’ English proficiency is low (although they are nice guys.) Fist, I will provide some vocabulary and patterns needed when they role play. Second, examples will be provided and they are given chances to play in a safer way. Then, I will give them another chance to add their own creative ideas in the role play. The process is not as interactive and dynamic as the interactive drama that we did; however, this will be satisfying if my students can carry on a conversation, using proper language in a certain situation.

Sonia's Reflection on Roleplay-Interactive Drama

2005-08-04T22:08:00.000+08:00

On Monday and Wednesday, Dr. Phillips introduced “Roleplay” and “Whodnuit?” to the class. Although these two activities were new to most of the members in Oral Communication class, we all had a good time playing the roles.
To my surprise, some shy classmates spoke English louder and faster than usual, and some prudent ones talked to one another without too much thinking about grammar. It seemed that almost everyone involved in the new roles and enjoyed them; interestingly, most of us became “changed” persons. How wonderful the two “GAMES” are!
It occurred to me that if I could adapt this two activities to my classrooms, some wonder surely would happen: students wear big smiles on their faces when they speak English without thinking too much grammar or their poor English, for they have to provide a lot of information to other members in a short period of time. The following steps are what I am going to take to modify ROLYPLAY. First, the characters in a Roleplay will be limited to 8—10 persons. That is, the whole class will be divided into 4—5 groups. As far as the speaking turns are concerned, there will be much more interactions between the members; moreover, some “silent” students will definitely encounter numerous occasions to offer some related information, and they will find it easier to speak English in front of people. Also others will consider the activity authentic, meaningful, and communicative so that they are willing to take part in it. Second, the complicated and sexual plot, which we teachers roleplayed in on Monday and Wednesday, will be modified to simpler and healthy one. The main reason is that it is not suitable for senior high school students to contact with the “dirty” world. Third, in order to let students have more ideas about their roles in a roleplay, the scripts will be given to them in advance. In addition, the characters’ names will be familiar to them. That is to say, some common English names such as John, Peter, Mary, Helen, etc. will be used. On the one hand, these names are easy for the students to pronounce; on the other hand, these names are painless for them to memorize. Finally, the most important part is that I will move my whole class to an empty classroom, if possible, or a playground so that this GAME will not disturb other students when they are studying. Up to now, all the above are what I think of how to adapt the Roleplay to my EFL classrooms.

I sincerely hope that my students will enjoy the GAME when playing it.

Feedback of Interactive Drama

2005-08-04T00:40:00.000+08:00

Though this is my second time to play in the interactive drama, I still have great time involving myself to the role just as I did last summer.

In Developing Children’s Language, Petty and Jensen maintain that “ creative dramatics fosters creativity in language, thinking, uses of the voice, and body movement” (p. 308) Drama allows learners to develop the ability to use language independently and creatively. Interactive drama is an effective teaching method to create an artificial situation and provide a purpose for learners to use their oral language and develop crucial thought process. On the other hand, interactive drama also helps us EFL teachers to rethink that role play is not just an activity for students to memorize lines and act it out on the stage; it could be communicative, negotiable and interactive.
The following website provides role play activities which are much easier and simpler for junior high school students http://www.englishlearner.com/teachers/speaking.html

Am I stupid??

2005-08-03T22:50:00.000+08:00

Am I stupid? How come I failed to smell "any" rat and spot the murderers twice( today & Monday class)? Is that because too many characters are involved in each play, which makes both criminal cases complicated, or is it simply the matter of my logic inadequacy? Anyway, it's intriguing and fun!

As I indulged myself with the chance of being someone else, I discovered that I spoke more English, and what's even better, I didn't pay much attention to the form as I used to, thinking only about how to perform my part well. According to the assigned articles, role-playing, interactive dramas, or whodunits, can serve well as useful language learning activities which stimulate realistic conversation and effective communication. After experiencing them myself, I really can't wait to test them out in my EFL classrooms.

However, while I was busying playing my role, I noticed that it's really difficult to remain clear-headed so as to solve a criminal case when I have to play my part in a foreign language. Somehow, my brain doesn't function well when asked to process two types of information that I'm not specially good at--inference and foreign-language production. So, I rather agree with Abdullan I. Al-Saadat and Elhami A. Afifi's idea which suggests EFL teachers to start with situations from the first language cultural context and lead gradually to English language situations. And most important of all, EFL teachers should constantly emphasize, "You can do it, class."

We all want to capture our students' interest and attention, and we all hope to develop their communicative linguistic skills, so, as we design our curriculums with Improvisational Language Structure (ILS) and Guided Imagery in mind, don't forget such power activities as Whodunits!!

Finally, welcome to my blog: http://hsinwei0518.blogspot.com/ , and feel free to leave any comments.

On Role-playing

2005-08-03T21:38:00.000+08:00

Hi, every one! How did you enjoy the role-playing?

According to the articles Dr. Phillips provided us, role-playing can relieve participants of their communicative limitations, capture their interest, foster self-confidence, and stimulate realistic conversation. Just how true is this for me?

On Monday, I tried role play for the first time. At first, I was completely overwhelmed by all those different roles and their relationships with one another. After ten minutes or so, since you guys all started to talk, I got used to the game. Besides, the hidden message on the old man's will began to arouse my interest in the murder case. Yet, after 40 minutes, I found myself tired and kind of dizzy.

From my own experience, I do believe that role-playing is a good way to help students embark on real-life conversation and focus on exchange of information rather than on correctness of grammar. But, if I am to use it with my 40 students in high school, I will find a simpler version which involves no more than 8 characters in order to keep the time of the activity short. I'll divide students into 5 groups and make sure that each group has a big enough area to move around lest they should feel dizzy. By the way, starting with pair work and easy information-gap role plays is a useful suggestion I learned from the articles!

Treat our mother earth well

2005-08-03T11:29:00.000+08:00

I'm really impressed by Selen's article. Indeed, very few people in Taiwn notice the importance of environmental issues. What is worse, they tend to be misled by commericals. Just as the webpage tells us, SUVs represent a paradox to consumers - television advertisements present them as a way to return to nature, yet they actually accelerate existing environmental problems. However, the sad truth is that these vehicles are contributing to the destruction of our natural resources.

Thanks to Selen's sharing, I will try to convey the correct environmental concept to my students and I strongly suggest my classmates just do the same.

Interactive Drama . . . a good start . . .

2005-08-01T16:57:00.000+08:00

You folks did well today during the interactive drama activity. Congratulations!

Here is a peek at one of the photos:

The rest of the photos can be found online in the Interacitve Drama Gallery (the galleries are in reverse chronological order so the newer ones are towards the top). If you look around, you will also notice several albums from previous ETMA classes.

I have emailed the scenario we played to the class list . . . this is to let you see how a piece is put together. Please do NOT use this scenario with your students . . . I like to use it. You may, of course, use it as a model to build your own pieces.

It is possible to create scenarios for your students - I suggest that you have a number of characters that may be male or female so you can re-use a scenario over the years without having to re-write it each year.

There are a great many example scenarios, including pieces by students as well as professional interactive dramatists, at the Interactive Drama Archive and you can find many useful articles on interactive drama there and in the Taipei Interactive Theatre Society which is a local group in Taipei that I am founder of. The articles range from history of interactive drama to theory to how to write scenarios. I also have a category for interactive drama on my Life of Brian blog which you might find useful. Obviously, I love interactive dramas (my doctoral dissertation at National Taiwan University was on interactive drama and I've been a role playing game fan since 1978. I am also the editor of the Journal of Interactive Drama.

If any of you are interested in more interactive drama for fun . . . feel free to contact me about joining the Taipei Interactice Theatre Society as we would love to have you join us!

ASSIGNMENT:

Notice . . . as I have posted this notice . . . I have used a number of links to outside webpages as well as an illustrative photograph. Your assignment for this week is:

Post a response to the assigned articles on roleplay and whodunit with our classroom activities in mind. Specifically, your response should be on ways that these type of activities can be adapted to your own classroom to best advantage - taking in the limitations of space, fluency, and the like.
Your post should have one (only one) illustrative photograph of your own (you may use the blogger photo upload tool or link to your own online gallery that allows photos to be posted to forums or blogs - there are a number of limited free services such as Flickr or Fotki available for such things (these can also usually be upgraded to pro status for more options). My Fotki gallery is here while my free level Flickr is here (obviously, I use the Fotki for most of my online photos).
Your post should also have at least one link to an outside webpage (such as your blog).
You should also edit the "links" section in your blogger blog to have a link to the ETMA Matters blog. You should also change the "edit-me" links in the Blogger template for your blog to actual links . . . perhaps to your own online photo pages, webpages, or your school or class pages or simply to useful links or places you have found on the web. You can do this by going into your Blogger Dashboard at http://www.blogger.com and opening the "settings" for your blog. Under template you can directly edit the settings. If you don't know what you're doing, don't change things other than searching for a heading category called "Links" that has some "edit me" links which don't go to anything. These are placeholders for you to edit and change with your own information. Notice for the ETMA Matters blog, I have placed teacher links first followed by a link to all of the student blogs. My personal Life of Brian blog has many more categories for posts as well as complicated link sets but that's a bit more complicated than our needs here. Our purpose is simply to make sure folks have some of the basic skills to setup a classroom or personal blog . . . and to have fun doing it while we share impressions, knowledge, experience, and ideas . . . and perhaps a smile or few.

Please continue to respond to one another's post both here at ETMA Matters and on their personal blogs. Feel free to expand your discussion here to include your responses to activities, readings, both in this course as well as others. You may wish to discuss ideas on how to best adapt or use material you are being exposed to in your own classrooms . . . or, perhaps, discuss other matters related to classroom management and the like . . . you are strongly encouraged to expand your personal blog to include more of your views on teaching, education, learning . . . and LIFE . . . life is always worthwhile, the personal touch. Some folks like to have a purely professional blog or multiple blogs for different purposes, but I find the ones that are a hodge podge of variety to be the more enjoyable - albeit, not always so. If you wish to have both a professional and a personal blog, feel free. Do let us know the URLs for both though.

All the best,
Dr. Phillips

Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH
http://www.briandavidphillips.com

SIGN UP for the COMPREHENSIVE IAETS EXPERIENTIAL HYPNOSIS COURSE in Taipei . . . Aug. 29 to Sept. 9, 2005 . . . limited seating

Jenny's " You Can't Resist" by Heineken

2005-07-28T23:29:00.000+08:00

“You Can’t Resist” by Heineken http://www.anistonavenue.com/heinekenbeerad.htm

The Scene takes place in the supermarket. Music- Happy Together by Turtles- is playing in the background as no words are spoken for the entire commercial.
A chic lady is standing on tiptoe to reach the bears on the shelf. A man is walking towards the lady whose low-waist jean shows her sexy shape completely. The man looks the lady for a second and grabs the last two beers. She looks at him with a wonderful smile and a thirst for the bottles in his hand. Should he please her or keep the beer for himself? The answer is “You Can’t Resist”….the beers, the man takes the beers away , leaving the lady standing there in surprise, with an unbelievable facial expression. I love this commercial not just I love beer but also I really appreciate the female actress- Aniston Avenna. According to Taipei Times, “Aniston, who appeared in Heineken's "Happy Together" commercial, helped lift the Dutch beer maker's sales by 15 percent since the ad and the suds' new packaging debuted in Taiwan in one month.” company officials said. How did the commercial do that? How did it persuade people to buy the products instead of other brands, including domestic brand- Taiwan Beer. After reading our papers” An Approach to Persuasion”, I found that it really fits all the five steps required in the persuasive process. First, the light music takes our listening and then Aniston catches our attention. By the way, She is not that kind of super actress who has perfect face and body line, for example Niko Kidman, but she has an image that she is home-round girl who also has her own style and spirit. It tries to persuade us that she is just one of us, common people, shopping in the supermarket. Second, there’s a common need between the lady and the man- they all want the beers. The lady wants the beers no matter how high they are up on the shelf, so does the man, no matter how sexy the lady is. Third, the man obtains his own satisfaction by taking away the last two beers. Fourth, the commercial makes the audience believe that drinking Heineken is a cool thing. Fifth, Action Step, the man just takes the beers away, no matter how adorable the lady is, leaving the lady alone.

Jenny is finally on the ETMA Blog

2005-07-28T23:10:00.000+08:00

Yahoo......................................
Hi, now is 11pm, and i finally got on the ETMA Blog after just changing my email addresss. " Is the party over? hello? " said Dory who has short-term memery problem. ( the blue female fish in FINDING NEMO ) I guess that's me. Hope to see u guys at the ETMA party next time .

Who Is the Most Beautiful Lady?

2005-07-27T05:58:00.000+08:00

ETMA Matters
Reading Jenny's "Heineken," I do remember two year ago, Dr. Phillips told me that the most beautiful lady is the one who looks at you and tips her head a little bit like the girl in the commercial. The girl in the commerical made such a attrative movement but still she was beaten by beer. "What are men thinking about?"

Pearl

I'm lovin' it!!!

2005-07-27T01:04:00.000+08:00

This is my blogger: http://www.blogger.com/home
The website of McDonald:
http://www.mcdonalds.com.tw/
McDonald’s, being the leading global quick service restaurant, must have some underlying messages in its website, which are worthy of discussion. That’s why I would like to choose it as my target to analyze. First of all, according to Attention Step, the designer adopts a set of distinct colors to get the audience’s attention, hoping they will spend more time reading it. Secondly, it also puts Social Needs into practice by holding a series of activities for teenagers, who especially need the sense of belongingness through the activities. Thirdly, also the most significant item so far, it provides the audience, also the potential customers an opportunity to establish their Self-Esteem by encouraging them to donate money to Ronald McDonald House. In this way, many people may feel comfortable about what they have done, and then they may appreciate themselves more. Charities also appeals to Self-Esteem Needs. Many people may feel satisfied with themselves through what they have done to help those kids in need. Finally, the commercial also sets a good example of adopting Law of Association by Kevin Hogan for its successful celebrity endorsement. Many teenagers may go and eat at McDonald’s just because their favorite star, Lee-Hom Wang, appears on the website. That is to say, they tend to connect this brand with the person they like unwittingly.
As for my own reflection of the activity, I think the activity is quite significant for our students who are not reasonable enough to detect the messages inside advertisements or commercials and then make purchases unreasonably. After joining the activity, I believe, they will be equipped with the ability to analyze any advertisements or commercials around them and then, they may avoid making any regretful decisions when going shopping next time.

Paulyta:boost your energy

2005-07-26T21:56:00.000+08:00

Here is the website of Paulyta:
http://www.paolyta.com.tw/index.htm
My blog website is :http://meganlinetma.blogspot.com/2005/07/httpwww.html
Though personally I am not an energy drink lover, the ads of Paulyta, especially BULLWILD series (蠻牛), entertain me a lot. I enjoy watching the TV commercial ads of Bullwild because it depicts the life of the laboring people vividly, often in an exaggerating way. Obviously, the target audience for the Bullwild are people from the laboring classes. So, the Law of Association is employed in that all the characters in the TV commercials are the laborers, who the the target audience can identify themselves with. Besides, the Motivated Sequence is also applied in many of the Bullwild series. First, the commercial begins with a special setting to draw the audience's attention. (Attention step) In the process of the story, the message is being conveyed to the audience again and again: you are tired and you need something to restore your energy. (Need step) Then the need of the exhausted man is satisfied by being offered a bottle of Bullwild. (Satisfaction step) After that, the focus is on the man drinking the Bullwild, feeling completely refreshed and energetic (Visualization step) The commercial comes to an end with a catchy slogan, "Are you tired?" meaning you should get one Bullwild to boost your energy (Action step)

Maybe I should get one Bullwild after finishing this assignment! Are you tired??

The ad "Keep Kids Fit"

2005-07-26T21:03:00.000+08:00

This advertisement “KEEP KIDS FIT” http://www.keepkidsfit.com/
perfectly fits the Motivated Sequences written by Monroe & Ehninger. Furthermore, Hogan’s Laws of Persuasion and Maslow’s theory of five basic human needs are applied to this ad.
First, it is the Attention step. The question “Do You Want to Help Foster a Healthy Lifestyle for Your Child?” arouses the readers’ attention because all parents hope that their kids are healthy, wanting them to win at the starting point. Then, the ad moves to the Need step by saying “Keep Kids Fit addresses the needs of families who want to teach their children to embrace a healthy, fit and active lifestyle.” Very quickly the ad goes to solution and visualization steps by saying “We provide solutions for those who want healthy children in body and mind! So, what do we do about it?” Finally, here comes the Action step. In the ad, it tells the readers how to get its products. So technically, the ad “Keep Kids Fit” is a good example of the Motivated Sequence, and thus without a doubt while reading this ad, the readers have a incentive to purchase the products.
But one interesting thing is that this ad author constantly uses Kevin Hogan’s Laws of Persuasion, such as laws of friends, consistency, and power. From Hogan’s point of view, if we regard one person as our friend, we are very likely to fulfill his or her request. So the author skillfully shifts his or her position from an advertiser to a friend of the readers by using the words “WE , US, or LET’S” in this ad. We can see this from the examples below.
Our children need us more than ever today to help grow both physically and mentally.
We all need to do our part to get the message out about the importance of providing our children with both physical and social activity. Rather than just putting our children in after school programs that just baby-sit them, let’s get them involved in both their physical and social well being by addressing those with exercise, writing, drawing, speaking activities. Let’s teach them the social graces of working with others. Let’s also teach them it is not “all about winning” but how you play the game…… so that we can offer a bright and fruitful future for our next generation. Let’s make today the start of a healthy plan for all of us, and most importantly for our children.
Another law of persuasion, the law of consistency, is cunningly used by asking six continuous questions. While answering them, you have no choice but just say YES. See the following examples.
Do you want to help your child eat better, look better and feel better about themselves?
Would you like to run your own home based business, doing something you love?
Would you like the satisfaction of providing children the skills to become a healthy adult?
Would you like to make a difference in the obesity epidemic?
Wouldn’t you like your child to be more excited about learning?
Wouldn’t you like your child to get along with others?
After you have said SIX YES, it seems very hard for you to say “no” to the seventh question. Therefore, the ad author says, “If you answered YES to any of the above, you owe it to yourself to get “Keep Kids Fit” so you can make those YES answers a reality.” We can see evidently how the ad author tricks readers into a trap by means of Hogan’s law of consistency.
Besides, Hogan’s Law of power is obviously used, for it says “we can all agree that the biggest risk to today's child is obesity. Studies have consistently demonstrated this.” At this point, this ad tries to convince the readers the seriousness of children’s obesity by some studies.
To make this ad more effective, the theories of Maslow’s five basic human needs are applied. In this ad, it says, "the needs of families who want to teach their children to embrace a healthy, fit and active lifestyle,"“to grow physically, mentally and socially.” In these sentences above, the author tries to connect kids’ physiological needs and social needs or even higher needs.
Generally speaking, this ad is successful in motivating the customers’ interests to buy its merchandise. Frankly speaking, I, as a mother, have an impulse to buy it. Ha ha, the ad works.
This is Sonia's bog http://soniahsiang.blogspot.com/

Pearl's Reflection on "A Slow Buyer"

2005-07-26T20:06:00.000+08:00

ETMA Matters

Wendy, it is a good way to buy things after second thought. I think I need to learn from you.
The commercials you posted here are so nice. All of them are presented in a smooth way with beautiful colors and elengant models. No wonder different commercials attractive different people. Take Monica for example. She is a pretty lady with fast pace when working so she chose "Kuro" with animated pictures. And the commercials you picked are so different. The findings are so interesting.
By Pearl

A slower buyer

2005-07-26T18:08:00.000+08:00

L'oreal's ad one of the very few advertisements that I would stay tuned when I see it. The reason why I think it is worthwhile watching is that, it hardly gives you any bad feelings, I mean, it's never pushy and it leaves you the room to decide for yourself.
It is a nice relax reading the ad, and even I run into the pluse buying some products, I normally don't feel the acid in it.
After reading Rokeach's analysis about the law of influence, I began to understand how and why the ads work on me. It works for me because it associates E type factor, i.e. inconsequential small thing with type A factor, people's core belief.
I do not like to be forced to do anything. Actually, I am such a drag when I was required to do anything. For example, I like to read a lot, however, if I was asked to read any material for test reason; my head is definitely going to experience a blackout.
In the ad, there are a series of choice for me to choose from. I can decide simply by my own will and my budget planning and the most important thing of all, at my own pace. It provides a lot of detail information for my to ponder by myself, ranging from suggested age group, price and its various features of the product.
I think it is the only reason why I sometimes buy things that I actually use it at a later time.

www.lorealparis.com.tw

An Earth Care Webpage

2005-07-26T15:28:00.000+08:00

Dear All,
Here is an example of Rokeach's theory of influencing other people's beliefs. This is not an advertising webpage. Rather, it is an environment-care webpage which tells people not to purchase a certain kind of vehicle-SUV(Sport Utility Vehicle). I know it does not conform to the most common combination of Type E beliefs with Type B- beliefs which associate people's inconsequential beliefs to those of the negative self-conceptions used by professional persuaders such as advertisors.
In my opinion, this webpage combines Type E beliefs with Type D beliefs because by giving numbers and statistics from the authorities, it informs you how harmful SUVs are to our environment. Also, I think it appeals to the Type B+ beliefs. By buying a cleaner car, you protect the earth, and thus you become a better man doing something beneficial to our world. Please let me know if I made any misinterpretations.
I have been concerned about the environmental issues. I strongly agree with what is presented in this webpage. That is why I take it as my example.

http://www.suv.org/environ.html

You may click on the title to visit my personal blog or click on the website above.

Shiseido's suntan lotion "anessa"

2005-07-26T01:02:00.000+08:00

Link to the picture of the product: http://d.kuso.cc.nyud.net:8090/file/1117946014-anessa_a1.jpg
Links to the commercials:
(15 sec) http://www3.stream.co.jp/web05/estation/shiseido/cm/050318an30.asx

Shiseido's ad and commercial on its suntan lotion, "ANESSA" has caught my attention and has created in my mind an image of remaining "white" after long exposure to the sun.

(Actually I'm not the kind of person that is easily influenced by commercials or ads. I am rather rational in this respect. )

In the ad, the model, with the fair skin, sweet smile, and the perfect figure, poses confidently, seemingly unharmed by the ultraviolet in the hot sun. The other two models, though with beautiful figures as well, have the skin that is a lot darker than the middle one. It is very persuasive for a "target customer" like me, who doesn't have fair skin, who gets dark easily, and who has always wished to become "whiter."

The target audience is clearly the girls or women who do not want to get dark but who may still have the chance to expose themselves to the sun, which may be a threat to their skin. People who already have "white" skin want to get even "whiter" while people whose skin is already dark wish to turn white after applying the lotion. Therefore, the Law of Association is employed in both the commercials and the ad to promote the product. Monroe and Ehninger's Motivated Sequence model can explain more explictly.

The pretty model first captures people's eyes, for nobody can resist beautiful things, especially when a delicate charming lady in a bikini showed herself with the posture. Not only men will notice her, but also women may want to take a second look at her. （Attention Step）Then, the model in the bikini (swimsuit) is engaged in two outdoor sports: swimming and cycling, which may have some audience feel the same need, who will or may be exposed to the sunshine. While it's impossible for people to stay indoors all the time, the ad and commercial thus build the need for target customers who need to apply the suntan lotion. (Need Step) Later the brand name of the product (suntan lotion) appears together with the model, the words in the color white. The image of white is stressed again. (Visualization Step)

Satisfaction Step and Action Step seem absent in the commercial. But maybe it's because I failed to find the Taiwanese version of the commercial but only viewed the Japanese one instead. I forgot what the ending was like in the Taiwanese version. Maybe the model said something to urge people to buy the product immediately. (Action Step?!)

Anyway, I think I will buy an Anessa suntan lotion after I use up my old one which is of another brand. Or maybe any of you can recommend me some better brands? I really need it! :)

Nothing but the "KFC"

2005-07-25T23:56:00.000+08:00

I think one of the most interesting and unforgettable TV commercial series would go to the "KFC". I recall one colleague who just yelled "This is not the KFC" all the time. Even among students, this commercial line really creates another form of fashion. Actually, we cannot deny the influence of the power they display.The KFC commercials website: www.kfcclub.com.tw/tvc.aspAfter watching these twelve commercials on the website, I could help laughing over and over again. No wonder they won't be forgotten easily and really survive after people watch so many commercials every day. The ideas or creativity involved cannot be underscored. Whenever a new product is about to be in the market, its commercial will get the consumers' attention first. The Motivated Sequence by Monroe is used all the time. First the attention is gathered from the image of the brand new product, and often an implication of need, espically the Physiological one, is presented by the characters involved. Meanwhile, a scene that demonstrates "a big bite" of the product not only satisfies the need but also visualizes the whole image. And finally, the consumers are asked to buy this product right away to act like the people do in the commercial.Moreover, hot issues in the society are often borrowed into the commercials, such as an episode that happened when the KMT's former president, Mr. Lien's paid his visit to Mainland and the famous Korean traditional show " Da-Tsan-Jin". The audience will quickly and strongly associate the commercials with these hot issues and creat firm links beteen.The ad-men are good at using famous characters, especially for children, such as Doraemon to win their favor. This situation is a little similar to the idea of Rokeach's Type C Beliefs, which emphasize the authority people trust. For children or even teens, Doraemon may be an authority or a good friend, mentioned in Hogan's laws of Persuasion. They just like and trust him and buy the product not becouse of the product itself but of the Toy."Creativity is everything", I think, that's also the number one principle for the people in ad business. The more creative the commercial is, the longer it will survive and influence. As we are all independent thinking human beings, we can make our lives more relaxing and interesting and appreciate all their creativity and brilliant ideas on TV. However, this doesn't mean that we have to buy all that stuffs, mostly junk foods.My blogsite is: jacquesbean.blogspot.comWelcome to join me here and make comments anytime. Jerry

Toyota: Your Best Choice

2005-07-25T00:25:00.000+08:00

1. Toyota TV Commercial:

http://www.toyota.com.tw/buycar/download/download.asp?nowclass=05

2. Pearl's blog:

http://pearlchang.blogspot.com

Toyota TV commercial, especial "Altis," presents an image like an image car. The commercial has the connotations of somewhat like a spaceship easy to handle, to turn around and stop abruptly. It worths viewing again and again. Each time you view it on the TV screen, you have different imagination.

However, is Toyota TV commercial really works? Is it attractive enough? I doubt! People here in Taiwan buy Toyota because of what Hogan calls Laws of Conformity and Law of Friends. A higher percentage of car buyers choose Toyota because many people buy it. Without thinking, they follow the trend and think it is the best choice. From psychological point of veiw, Kevin Hogan believes people are strongly motivated to fulfill their friends' request without thinking hard. To me, I think there is one more Law of Persuasion; that is Law of "Loyalty" or "Trust." You think Toyota has a good reputation. You buy its car not because of the commercials or advertisements.

All in all, I think TV commercials or advertisements are not so influential sometimes.

P.S. The TV commerical of Saab demon is fabulous. I strongly recommend you to view it.

Your comments are much more than welcome.

Have You "Kuro"ed Today?

2005-07-24T19:20:00.000+08:00

1. Monica's English Park: http://hsinwei0518.blogspot.com

2. The website of Kuro: http://www.kuro.com.tw/Kuro/tv_view.htm

After watching the TV commercial of Kuro, one can only give both thumbs up for its success in influencing and persuading people. Just like what the title suggests, it seems that using Kuro is as routine, if not necessary, as eating three meals every day.

This reminds me of the five steps in the Motivated Sequence developed by Alan Monroe and Douglas Ehninger and the Law of Consisitency and Conformity proposed by Kevin Hogan. On the one hand, while the commercial of Kuro is presenting the problem of most people's lack of musical etiquette, it is motivating the audience by developing the need step. Kuro cleverly appeals to the Social needs, suggesting that the Kuro users will no longer be regarded as music fools and will even be considered "high-class." On the other hand, the commercial makes good use of some Laws of Persuasion by creating the feeling that the audience should become the members of Kuro if they realize the importance of musical etiquette and the threat of being musically illiterate, and if they notice its popularity among the majority of other people or their peer groups.

So, go check the website and its TV commercial as well. You'll feel the persusive power of Kuro as I do.

Persuasion of Commercials

2005-07-24T14:07:00.000+08:00

1.This is Vera's Blog:
http://verahan99.blogspot.com/

2.The yahoo mailphoto ad:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/photomailtour/

This yahoo photomail ad provides us with a vivid example which is made by the motivated sequence and the combination of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to persuade the audience to use the service.

Starting from a story, it narrates a daughter who likes to share her life with her mom via emailing photos. It is mainly separated into four parts: the introduction, sending photos, receiving photos, and get started.

At the beginning, the ad makes the audience to identify the main character very much by showing the woman's life which is just like everyone of us, and therefore the audience tend to believe what happens to her may happen to us as well. It informed the audience that the old e-mail way exist bunch of annoying troubles to send photos. However, it is not impossible to avoid the troubles. It could be very easy to overcome all those problems by applying the new yahoo email service. This may not only attract our attention for the reason she is one of us but also convince the audience that her need is our need and we all suffer from those painful experiences. The ad combined the attention, need, and satisfaction step naturally by the form of a story. Furthermore, it also involves Maslow’s social need that by the usage of service, we may improve our connection with others.

After introduction for the service, the ad illustrated practical instances, from the standpoints of the user and the receiver, to show how convenient, interesting and easy if adopting the service. It is the visualization step which strengthens the audience’s mind that it do help us in a very effective way. In the phase, the ad promotes the audience's behavior by the principles of conditioning from Behavorism. It stimulates and attracts the audience's heart very much.

In the last stage, get started, it explicitly showed the information of how to implement the service. Just to install the service step by step. Then the audience can change their life in a better way. It conforms to the action step that offers the customers ways to change.

Our lives are full of miscellaneous ads. It seemed impossible we reject all of them. Nevertheless, I feel lucky that I have the knowledge to realize and to analyze the rationale of them for the more we understand about the way how the ad persuades us, the more meaningful, wise and practical purchasing or decisions we will make.

An old fried: Hey Song soda

2005-07-24T11:43:00.000+08:00

My blog website:
http://lifeexpands.blogspot.com/

Hey-Song TV commercials http://www.heysong.com.tw/museum/classicad/cf.htm

Hey Song is a familiar old brand name to people in Taiwan. When I was a little child, Hey-Song soda was the most common beverage appearing on the tables at weddings or any carnival occasions. Besides, Hey-song sarsaparilla (沙士) was a common drink in my family in those hot summer days.

But, in the highly competitive market of beverages, how can this old brand still appeal to people?

First, I noticed that Hey-Song has grown from its beginning as a producer of a single carbonated drink to today's producer of a variety of beverages, such as fruit drinks, tea, coffee and even water.

What’s more, on its TV commercials, Hey-Song employs the law of association to persuade people. Instead of connecting the product with people we like or respect, Hey-Song connects its products with “ideas.” These warm and encouraging ideas advocate helping one another in this seemingly indifferent society, which people tend to agree with and even applaud for.

How well do these commercials work? For me, the series of TV commercials did impress me and more than once I found myself humming the songs unintentionally! Next time I walk into a convenience store, Hey-Song may not be my first choice, but the old brand name did leave a forever favorable impression on my mind.

Joyce's reflection on influence

2005-07-24T10:24:00.000+08:00

Dear all,

I have set up my own blug and had my first comment posted on it.
Your visits and comments are more than welcome.

my blog: http://joyfuljoyce0210.blogspot.com/

And also you can read my reflection here.

Joyce almost persuaded by the charity ad

commercial website http://www.wvi.org/wvi/child_sponsorship/child_sponsorship.htm

After reading the child sponsorship section on World Vision, I almost have an impulse to donate money right at the moment.

Under the title “child sponsorship,” there are sub-categories entitled as “What is Child Sponsorship,” “ How a community benefit,” “Why your help is need,” “How it all begin,” and “sponsor now.”We can take a look at the strategies employed and examine how they conform to the Motivation Sequence developed by Alan Monroe and Douglass Ehninger.

First, it provides a story of an India poor girl named Sanja which causes the immediate attention from the audience. The girl lives in extreme hardship with no food to eat, no clean water to drink and safe shelter to live in. This story arouses sympathy from audience.

The second strategy is called Need step. Different levels of needs are shown. On one hand, the section “Why your help is need” gives detailed description on the disadvantaged situations children suffer, which suggests that Physiological needs and Security needs of children are threatened. On the other hand, the organization tells its audience that they can build a special relationship with your sponsored child. This connection enhances mutual trust between a donor and a child and therefore satisfies social needs. Moreover, the action of donation suggests a meaningful and fulfilling life which makes us feel better of our self-esteem.

Later, by providing the information how the communities benefit from sponsorship, the audience understand how the organization work to solve problems. This is called Visualization Step.

The last step, action step, provides you with links for you to make a donation for World Vision office in your home country as you can see in “Sponsor now.”

This website really provides good reasons for people to do charity. Even when encouraging people to do something so meaningful and fulfilling, principles of how to persuade people are still quite important. I think these principles might be useful in application to persuade lazy students work harder.

On influence

2005-07-24T08:29:00.000+08:00

Dear all,
I've had my blog and my article on influence is on it. Please log onto my blog for viewing my article and giving me comment, which is most welcome. Thank you very much. My blog website is: http://nicketma.blogspot.com

Best regards
Nick

Wanda's comment of advertisement

2005-07-23T11:29:00.000+08:00

The ad website:http://www.affiliatejackpot.com/index2.htm

This advertisement about Google Cash is a book that the advertiser wants to promote. The advertisement is a good example of persuasive advertising following the Motivated Sequence developed by Alan Monroe and Douglass Ehninger.

In the beginning when reading the ad, readers’ attention is immediately caught with the line “How to Make MASSIVE Mounds of Money In Record Time on Google”. Moreover, by describing his personal experience through the letter telling that he used to commute one hour, five days a week working in his small office but now he earns more than an entire years in one month, the advertiser successfully captures readers’ interest in keeping reading the ad to learn more about the product. Obviously the readers’ interest in reading the ad is motivated by earning massive money in short time. According to Marslow, physiological needs are our biological needs for food, water, shelter while the role that money plays is that it can absolutely help us to fulfill our need to get this stuff . Besides, owning massive money involves our wanting to be prestigious and powerful over someone, which fits into Marslow’s social needs.

For the visualization step, the advertiser illustrates a picture for readers by telling that if they buy the product Google Cash, which gives the tools they need, they can even make money at home or while they’re traveling with family. The use of questions is another influential technique that the advertiser makes use of in order to persuade the readers. Kevin Hogan claims that questions “are used in the persuasion process to clarify statements, determine values, draw out objections and direct the conversation.” Through questions and answers, the advertiser clarifies the readers’ viewpoint in guiding them believing that working through computer& on-line technique isn’t difficult and that it is a matter anyone can do.

Another important element the advertiser uses is the law of conformity and scarcity. As Kevin Hogan describes “most people tend to agree to proposals, products or service that will be perceive as acceptable by the majority of other people”, the advertiser posts lots of comments written by those who have succeeded in profiting with the help of the product; and “when a person perceives that something he might want is limited in quantity, he believes that the value of what he might want is greater than if it were available in abundance”, while to fit the element of the law of scarcity, the advertiser informs the potential buyers of the price which may not as low as now it is. This technique of scarcity easily motivated them to take the action and buy it now.

After analyzing the advertisement, I’ve realized how amazingly the advertiser knows well the readers’ psychology and is able to persuade them into purchasing his product, and the experience tells me that when next time a salesperson comes and sells something to me, I can rationally make the decision whether to buy it or not.

wanda's blog:http://wanda621.blogspot.com/

ETMA Matters

2005-07-23T09:45:00.000+08:00

ETMA Matters

Claire's Paradise
http://www.clk4.com/AIU/about.cgi?SITE_ID=707769&MEDIA_ID=243008&src=&v=20&otim=1122071329
Influence on: Top 10 Reasons Students Choose to Attend AIU Online

After looking at the 10 reasons, it seems that I almost have the desire to sign in right at the moment. The top 10 reasons are as follows.
1. A Great Education From a Quality University: It gives the participants power just to attend the accredited university they offered.-->Power
2. Rich Multimedia Course Content: The SingularityTM Learning Model they offer makes me feel that only they offer this kind of course.-->Scarcity
3. Study Online Any Time:At AIU Online, they claim users can access to a complete campus experience, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.-->Attention and Need
4. Get your degree fast: Compared with other universities, they can guarantee their participants gratuate within just 10 months. What a nice offer.--> Attention and satisfation
5. Successful Graduates: This involves my sense of security. I will not fail in the end.
6. A Superior Faculty: It attrates my attention. I want to enjoy their luxurious equipment,too.
7. Our Dynamic, Interactive Virtual Campus: It's convenient and catches my attention.
8. Our Cybrary: It offers convenience and saves us much time.
9. 24-Hour Technical Support:For a busy person, it's important to have 24-hour technical support at his/her disposal.
10. Professional Guidance: "Professional" is a powerful word for me.
Because I am right now struggling for the proposal, this commercial really caters to my needs. It points out what a student really likes. After knowing the approach to persuasion and Hogan's laws of persuasion. I come to realize how customers are influenced. It's really practical for everyone.

http://clairema.blogspot.com/

On Influence: Be a better man for a good cause

2005-07-22T20:05:00.000+08:00

This is my own blog: http://laurainetma.blogspot.com

From this website, you can see The Motivated Sequence quite clearly.
From the very beginning, the titile, Helping others can help you, catches your attention because you can barely associate others' benefit with yours.
Right after reading this paragraph, you are naturally led to the next paragraph, your special need to be admitted to the future college, if you happen to be one of the eager college-student-wanna-bes. If your need isn't limited to being accepted by your college, you have every reason to read the content of the next catchy titile, Reasons to volunteer. The needs mentioned above belong to the social, self-esteem, and self-actualization needs according to Maslow. While between the lines of explanation of reasons to volunteer, the message sent by the reading is "Be a volunteer and you can reach these goals." Such message is the solution/satisfaction of your doubt or need.
The next title, How to get involved, belongs to the visualization step, which tries to tell you explicitly how to be a volunteer.After that, you are presented some websites which you can opt freely to be a volunteer. This is the action step.
What I like about this article is that it doesn't seem too advertising-oriented because it gives you good cause to do charity and it doesn't represent any organization. After reading this ariticle, you, as a reader, don't feel being fooled into donating to a certain organization.
The motivated sequence by Alan Monroe and Douglas Ehninger gives me a chance to become a smarter and more rational customer and I believe you feel the same, too.

i'm lovin' it---Anna's reflection

2005-07-22T16:14:00.000+08:00

http://www.mcdonalds.com/usa/fun.html
http://www.mcdonalds.com/usa/fun/tv.html

“McDonald is one of life’s many small pleasures that millions of people around the world enjoy every day. Great food. Fun to eat. Casual environment. Local and familiar. And always something new. ”

McDonald business has been worldly known for its freshness, efficiency, positiveness, politeness, and creativity of fast food service. Ever year The McDonald invests lots of money in trying to promote its business images, sales of products by making innovative ads to achieve their goals. In the ad “ i’m lovin’ it! ”, the song with the three-word line and pop music interwoven creates a certain level of good feelings which can be found in people’s everday lives. (school activities, family unions, friendships, sweethearts, sports, etc.). The pop-like beat, and easy-to-pick lines very soon makes it a household song around the world. Besides, the content of “ I’m lovin’ it” is always full of people smiling, facing wonderful or unforgettable moments, overcoming life difficulties…etc which constantly conveys people positive and upward images.

Throughout the history, the development of each individual being has always been shaped and interplayed by the five needs Maslow presented. According to Maslow, “Having fun with McDONALD” is just like what he depicts in terms of social aspect. Men can not live alone. Everybody needs connections. In order to feel secure and fulfilled, he/she needs to love and to be loved by others likewise. And love usually comes from inert and intra-relationships with self, family, friends and the society…etc. The McDONALD ad design skillfully associates positive relationships with people’s social needs. You enjoy wonderful times with your beloved, and McDONALD provides you with this. Once you are enjoying McDONALD, it creates great associations with good feelings of the time you do some wonderful things. This is why we see lots of heartwarming, humorous, funny, or heartening scenes in the ad which also explains the psychoanalysis theory presented by Rokeach. Or if it doesn’t remind people of any good moments, at least the frequency of the ad on TV reinforces the stimuli effect to let people buy the ad in order to have the same feeling the ad creates. It’s like the perfume pouring out from a bottle, and the scent spreads over. Once a large certain group of people have high consensus and pay high attention to the product, it easily and contagiously leads to a series of consecutive consuming heat. This is what was raised by Milton Rokeach---type A belief—supported by one hundred percent social consensus, to believe what everyone believes, taken-for-granted axioms.
All in all, the McDonald has been playing a convincing role in the competitive fast food markets. As long as it keeps to stay innovative and eager in service, the leading place will always belong to it.

This is my own blog: http://toannaworld.blogspot.com/

What a wonderful class!

2005-07-20T21:37:00.000+08:00

Hi, everyone.

Oral Communication is a wonderful course. Every class is full of fun, joy, and excitement. Today we had a fantastic discussion period. During the discussion, poor Nick argued with 4 "girls" all the way to the end. He is really eloquent!The implication of this kind of discussion in senior high school is not impossible. It needs the instructor's patience and guidance. Surely, it will be a big challenge to the instructor. However, there is nothing that we can't conquer. To tell the truth, those communicative activities posted on the web by Dr. Phillips are so useful. I printed some of them out and studied them with a jouful heart. And I promise myself I will use them when the school begins.All in all, thank you, Dr. Phillips, for offering us so many materials and give us happy time together!

I think the class is pretty interactive

2005-07-20T18:34:00.000+08:00

Hey, Good day, everyone,

I'm Wendy. I think this conversation class is pretty interesting. I like the stuff Dr. Phillips brings us. It's very interesting and it demands intensive participation in and outside of classroom. I feel the pressure and I will do my best.

I like WHO'S LINE IS IT, ANYWAY? very much. I wonder how come the participants can be so quick-witted and yet pratical in their way of expressing themselves. They are really trained with the ability to show themselves. I hope that my studuents can catch the gist in learning a language. There is a lot of fun in learning new things, particularly in learning English. Afterall, it is widely agreed upon that it is not too easy and not too hard, isn't it?

Breathe in and breathe out. Relax and enjoy every moment!

Anna's feedback on ILS

2005-07-20T18:22:00.000+08:00

“Whose line is it anyway” is a wonderful and excellent resource for educational use. It not only entertains everybody in class but also plays an important role for language learning and teaching. Usually, speakers of foreign languages tend to achieve native-like fluency and accuracy by practicing lots of exercise with memorization and drills involved when learning other languages. They can do pretty well in speeches, drama, funny shows…in terms of language production when well-prepared. But when it comes to improvisation, it’s not likely to be the case that people can improvise as well as they do when preparing enough. ILS provides good access to understanding the nature of using languages--- Using the language in unconscious ways. In the first period of this course, the process of any language learning, as Dr. Phillips mentioned, was from conscious to unconscious ways. Only achieving the stage of unconsciously and improvisatorially producing language, can a person be said that he really picks up the language. ILS games so fascinate and remind me of my current English teaching and learning that I can’t wait to see my students’ reaction to it. Putting the idea of ILS into classroom, I would use the method to encourage students that learning languages can be fun, humorous, real and practical. It’s not easy to get started in elementary level. Taiwanese students tend to be shy, passive, conformist, and not given much time and place having their own say. Not easy to be open to public is also one characteristic of them. They are not trained to have keen sense to performing lots of aesthetic skills as well in schools which totally opposes to kids in American. Besides the former reasons, the language level of elementary students may not be sufficient to play the ILS games. It seems to have lots of obstacles to exercising ILS in elementary school level. However, can’t wait to see students’ response to games, I try to think of solutions to solve these problems. In elementary schools, group students into small size heterogeneously. Encourage cooperative learning. Choose easier ILS games to get started according to students current level (sometimes can be i＋1 level of games). Give clear and excellent guidance. Embrace classmates and teachers support. Use ILT as achievement activities or proficiency activities.Please feel free to comment anything I mention above or give me any ideas to help me modify my initial ILS plan.I do enjoy watching “Whose line is it anyway” downloaded from the link Dr. Phillips provided. Actually me and Wendy have watched it over several times. It really relieve me from ETMA course burdens. Thanks a lot.Anna

setting up your own blog

2005-07-20T13:41:00.000+08:00

Before next Wednesday . . . 27 July 2005 . . . each of you should set up your own blog . . . either on blogger, associated with the same account as ETMA Matters or on another service.

On your blog, post on Influence . . . link to a webpage that contains an advertisement, commercial, or persuasive article and discuss it in terms of which of Rokeach's Levels of Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values are being used or which of Maslow's Hierarchy of Motives/Needs is being appealed to or which of Cialdini's Laws of Influence is being put to use.

You shoule mirror your post on ETMA Matters with a link to your own blog.

You can make links by typing the name of the page, then highlight it and click the link button in the Blogger post form.

You should make one original post AND comment upon two posts by classmates . . . your comments should include a link to your own blog.

Dr. Phillips

A Fascinating Experience

2005-07-20T11:32:00.000+08:00

Experiencing the Guided Imagery is fascinating for me. After doing this Guided Imagery, I find this truly is a practical in-class activity which can not only integrate the four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing but also create a more comfortable, relaxing and harmonious atmosphere in the classroom. Hence, I just can’t wait to conduct the activity in the classes I'm going to teach in the coming semester.

However, there are still some issues in my mind to think about. First, is there still anything we have to pay attention to when applying this activity to teenagers? What if some of them are so involved in the situation I’ve described that they just can't come back to the reality? Second, what's the maximum number of the participants? Is it proper to have only one instructor for about 48 participants? Finally, except conducting the activity in class, what are the other solutions to alleviate the pressure of learning English? In short, it's amazing to take part in the meaningful activity in Dr.Phillips' class, and hopefully, I can learn as many creative activities as I can in this course!

April's confession ......comes late!

2005-07-18T12:20:00.000+08:00

I must confess that guided imagery didn't work very well on me in the class. (That's why I contributed little to the group sharing.) Perhaps it's because I'm the kind of person that tends to build walls among people. It doesn't mean that I don't like to make friends. Actually I do, but only when I get familiar with others do I feel comfortable to speak more of myself. In Wednesday's class, when I closed my eyes, following Dr. Phillip's or other classmates' guidance, I did imagine myself in the fictitious context, but the problem is that I couldn't really relax myself. I failed to "act" in the imagery. What I visioned was just scenes changing in a third-person perspective. So it's a little frustrating when I found most of you could benefit from the guided imagery but I couldn't.

However, it's also amazing to find as I was writing my own guided imagery script, I grew cheerful and contented along the way. In my imaginary web, I spent my time in a carefree summer afternoon. I guess maybe that's how guided imagery works on me! ^_^

Anyway, I believe something must have happened in me, but it takes a longer while. I'll try to focus more, get myself really involved, and most importantly, enjoy the process I've gone through. It's the process that counts, isn't it?

Some words on guided imagery.

2005-07-16T23:09:00.000+08:00

Good night, everyone!

Yesterday I took a Yoga class. In the class, we were asked to do a difficult posture to strengthen the muscles of our legs. I instinctively imagined myself to be a yoga teacher with flexible and strong muscles and told myself it's a sure thing that I could do it. Without much difficulty, I made it.

There were moments in my life when negative thinking was hard to shed and when a positive self-image was denied me. Thankfully, there were also those moments when I accidentally caught a glimpse of my potentia :)

I would like to interpret the practice of using power of imagery this way: by closing my eyes, focusing in on my physical or mental troubled self and visualizing a better one, I am not trying to do wonders. Instead, I am making an uncoditioned assertion that I have faith in me and I love myself. This faith and love gives me strength to move forward :)

Good news for me!

2005-07-16T21:58:00.000+08:00

Last year was the most tiring year for me because I taught senior high 3 graders. In order to prepare students for the Joint College Entrance Exam, I crammed them hard with numerous words, sentence patterns and articles from different sources. As you can imagine, there was no such thing as fun in my class. I hated it but just couldn't do anything about it as we were under lots of pressure. But the good news is I am going to teach freshmen in the coming semester so I can add some variety in my teaching apart from tests. And even better news is that I have learned some improvisational games from Dr.Phillips' class which are so interesting. I will apply some of them to my class and I believe students will definately love them. I can't wait to see a conversation class full of laughter and fun!

It really worked!!

2005-07-16T21:53:00.000+08:00

Hi, everyone
This is Jerry. I really want to blog my reflections on the waterfall imagery we did on Wed. Before going to Brian's class on Wed, I got a headache because I didn't sleep well the night before. Everytime I have sleeping problems, I always have a headache. So, during the Imagery procedure, conducted by my partners, I couldn't help holding my head with my hands, and I couldn't quite concentrate on the whole procedure.
However, for the last imagery practice about the waterfall, I just followed Selena's directions and imagine myself lying down on a big rock (of course with my wife) jsut next to the tremendous waterfalls, located in Ne-tung (內洞) National Forest Park. It is also reported that the waterfalls here have the number one offerings of anions. I just imagined that the water and the light above poured into my body from my head and carried the pain smoothly and slowly down the body. Little by little, I did feel that my head didn't hurt that much though it was still there.
Then after the class was dismissed, I went directly home and took a shower immediately. The water again but real this time went from my head to my toes. I think I really enjoyed it at that moment. After the shower, my wife and I went to a nice restaurant and I didn't even feel the pain ever since. So, the guided imagery activities really work if both the situation and environment could go well with each other. So say goodbye to the painkiller pills.
This is what I want to share with all you guys there. Thanks a lot all for your help in class. By the way, there's a super typhoon about to come this weekend. Make sure everything is well-prepared and don't come out!!
Jerry

Sonia's Reflection on ILS

2005-07-16T13:22:00.000+08:00

Dear classmates,
I have taught English since I graduated form National Taiwan Normal University. In the first ten years, I taught junior high school students. It is last year that I had the chance to teach senior high school students. I had never know that I love teaching so much until the first day I formally stood on the platform to teach those junior high school students. The longer I teach, the more I love to teach those teens. Those students are so energetic and are eager to know more.
As hardworking as I am, I do everything I can do to promote my students’ grades and their motivation to learn English. Personally, I regard that besides teaching, we teachers should pay attention to students' learning performances; thus, the results of the tests they take will provide me a good avenue to examine my teaching and my students’ learning. Are my teaching methods and their learning strategies effective? After constantly scrutinizing these two points and improving them, most of my students can get satisfying scores; but there is one thing continuing bothering me.
In a classroom, I am demanding and strict, so the atmosphere in my classroom is a little dull. Although being not humorous, I keep trying to find ways to improve the situation. I strongly believe that there must be a method which can make students love to learn and get good grades at the same time.
Thanks to Dr. Phillips, through the activities of ILS (Improvisational Language Structure), a lot of inspirations occurred to me. Those activities can make the classrooms full of fun and do not damage my teaching principles, either.
I can not wait to see how my students will respond to these new games and their big smiles on their faces.

How I Apply Improvisational Language Structure (ILS) to My Classrooms?
ILS is a good way to change the nervous atmosphere in my classrooms and improve students' listening and speaking simultaneously. For the first time, one hour is needed to introduce ILS and let my students watch the TV program “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” Then in a following hour, they are required to do ILS. Hopefully, through one hour’s training, they will be familiar with ILS. The rest is going to be an easy part. Whenever some of my students feel drowsy, one of the activities I will use is ILS. To make sure that all the students will take part in ILS enthusiastically, their performances will be evaluated both by their classmates and the teacher.
In the end of this reflection, I want to say THANK YOU to Dr. Phillips again for his providing ILS to us.

Wow! How fascinating !

2005-07-15T22:31:00.000+08:00

Wow! How fascinating ! This is a brand-new experience for me and I am really excited about it.
When I decided to take this course, I was kind of nervous because it's oral communication which I am not good at. However, it turned out to be fun. That's really wonderful and surprising. In the first period, I was impressed by the 9 laws of influence which were practical for all of us. We know how to influence others and not to be affected if we are not willing to.
Then, several games were introduced to us and there are still lots of games for me to explore. It seems that I can use some of them on my students. I believe they will love the games definitely.
When ILS (improvisational language structure) was introduced to me, I thought it was quite serious. But after I saw the video, I was amazed by those games they played on TV. Those people were really professional and they were really quick in responding. I wonder how they can be that good.
Also, the guided imagery really works for me. Since I started to take the lessons three years ago, I have been nervous and suffered from headache from time to time. Taking deep breath and closing eyes to imagine brings relaxation for me a little. I am especially interested in the healing power guided imagery might contain. From now on, I will try to do the guided imagery whenever I am stressed out and have a headache. Hopefully, I will still be really happy and healthy under so much pressure during this summer vacation.

Wanda's feedback on guided imagery

2005-07-15T14:08:00.000+08:00

Though evidences have shown the mysterious power of guided imagery, at first I was as suspicious as Monica of its power on us while Dr. Phillips was trying to guide us into an imagery world. But later on, I could feel it really help relax personal tenseness and I was so involved in the picturesque world that I had to try very hard to turn back to the reality and open my eyes when the professor counted to 3. A feeling of refreshment fulfilled my body and soul. However when we were grouped and doing the guided imagery ourselves, I dared not say that each of the guided imagery activities had good impression on me. Remember the garbage can and the yellow balloon? Believe it or not, I could even smell the sour stink of the garbage can; though the smelly garbage can took away my worry by the balloon, the stinky smell still stayed with me not until I opened my eyes. At that moment I thought that example of guided imagery didn’t work on me, but things amazing happened the next day morning. I’m not telling you that my worry disappears, but I no more feel as anxious as I used to be and start to perceive my worry in another way.
When it comes to the application of guided imagery into language teaching, I regard it as a useful listening and speaking practice activity or even a creative writing activity for my students. Besides, not only does the guided imagery provide us language teachers a new way to teach language skills, but it can also be served as an outlet for students’ stress since they are under great pressure of taking tests every day.
Wanda

I just love games

2005-07-15T13:47:00.000+08:00

Dear all,
This is Laura Liao. I’d love to talk about my language teaching in the past 2 semesters and the possible effect on my future teaching after I learn something about ILS in Dr. Phillips’ classroom.
I’ve always expected myself to be a non-preaching but humorous and funny teacher. Problem is that my students are hard to please. I mean it. Very hard. They are a bunch of high school girls whose passion for life and enthusiasm for learning are mostly destroyed by scores of quizzes and tests. (I give tests, too, but very moderately.) I tried to put games and activities into my teaching. Activities were always held after tons of vocabulary was taught or an article from the textbook was presented. I thought they would be grateful for what I had planed for them. But they seemed okay, no big deal! This frustrated me a lot. And I hated my students for their reaction. I felt guilty of my dissatisfaction toward them, but I just couldn’t help it.
Looking back on what I had been through, I am glad I took this course. What Dr. Phillips said about the theory and effectiveness of the improvisational language games strengthens my confidence in GAMES. Next time when sullen and lack-of-interest faces come up in my classroom, I will tell myself to stick on it. With such faith in ILS, teaching English via games can be less frightening for me.
However, what I’ve learned from this class should be adjusted a bit to match my students’ ability so that the games can be feasible and playful enough for my students.
I just love games in my classroom.

Finally, I got in. ^_^

2005-07-15T01:49:00.000+08:00

I find Guided Imagery very wonderful not only becasue it helps to develop students' language skills but also it is useful and meaningful for life. This activity creates oppertunities for students to practice speaking and listening in a fun way. In an easy mood, one can learn English without pain and anxiety. Furthermore, this is also a very good skill for anyone to employ when one suffers from pressure. The kind of lerning integrates the learnig of language with the learning of some other content--in this case, it's an exercise of deep relaxation.

I would like to conduct activities which are not merely for the purposes to sharpen language skills. I hope students can use English as a means of communication and learn something else.

Vera's Feedback on ILS

2005-07-14T20:47:00.000+08:00

Vera's View on Improvisational Language Structure

As an elementary school English teacher, my philosophy of teaching English is to motivate my students' interest and to foster them the basic knowledge and skills in English learning. I believe that“English teaching should consist of fun and energy for kids." Take myself for example. I started my English learning at a commercial language institution at the age of nine. At the beginning, it was a brand new experience and I was attracted by the new sounds, characters, foreign teachers and textbooks with vivid pictures. Everything was novel for me. Somehow, I was assigned to an inappropriate class where many kids have higher English ability or already have years learning experiences. So, English became a very dark and painful experience in my childhood. Because I got great anxiety for English, I even skipped the classes many times. Consequently, my tragic childhood memory always reminds me not to give too much pressure to students, especially for those younger learners. If they are not willing to learn at all, how can you expect them to speak anything? How can they treat a nightmare like candies when they feel frightened in their deep heart?
Improvisational language structure (ILS) gives one of the best contexts to lower students' pressure and helps them to reduce their language ego. In addition, it promotes students not to perceive their self-consciousness and to engage greatly in the language. That was really cool. For many language learners, no matter what age it is, it is challenging and quite difficult to speak in public. They get embarrassed and feel devalued about themselves if making mistakes in front of their classmates. However, while learners engage in a game which owns similar relaxing effect given by ILS activities, they focus themselves on the game and pay less attention on the mistakes or accuracy. In this way, they may produce more fluent English or at least do their best to express their messages to contribute themselves to achieve the mission. Meanwhile, they neglect the part of the forms or the structures of English. They just learn how to communicate meaningfully and functionally. However, it was sometimes argued that if we put too much emphasis on language fluency then students may have fossilization problems. It is worthwhile to take care of the problem but not take in a pessimistic way. Fortunately, there are still some ways to improve it. For example, we teachers may correct students' errors in private or correct them in a whole class after the game finishes. It is we teachers' responsibility to monitor them and inform them after the activity.
On the other hand, I found out ILS not only help develop language fluency but also nurture the valuable intelligence—creativity. Creativity has been absolutely one of the high competitiveness indexes nowadays. I especially enjoyed the show, whose line is it anyway, when the participants had to squeeze different answers in a limited time. "The prop”is my favorite. It was surprising that we humans may make use of the plain thing in miscellaneous ways. Those funny and innovative answers came to imply we have the power to change things used to seem impossible.
ILS is consistent with my teaching belief. I look forward to merge the idea into my teaching to strengthen students' motivation in English. Owing to the age of my students, I intend to adjust some of the improvisational games to become easier and friendly. I can't wait to see their elated face and hurray!

^___^ P.S. The photo was taken by me in Palau!!

Guided Imagery

2005-07-14T13:38:00.000+08:00

After a long drive from Taoyuan to our school in the burning heat of the midday, it was supposed to be quite a sleepy afternoon in yesterday's class. But it was not. I really felt refreshed and spirited while I drove back home.Actually I had self-studied and practiced meditations for Qi exercise for a couple of months about ten years ago. I enjoyed that experience a lot. However, I failed to grasp certain essentials of meditations since I studied on my own. For example, I don't know how to breathe correctly and stop my brains from thinking disorderly.Guided imagery is easier to practice and master because it provides clear steps for us to follow. Our thoughts won't end up nowhere and thus feel more anxious.We are all fully aware of the importance of taking physical exercises to keep our bodis fit. Meanwhile, equivalent emphasis should be given to the ones that deal with our mental health, especially when melancholia is such a prevailing disease in our modern societies.

Finally... I'm into the field of BLOG!!

2005-07-13T21:12:00.000+08:00

Dear Prof. and classmates,
Can you imagine how excited I am while typing each word of my first post in a BLOG right now? Were I not in the dorm, I would exclaim with excitement for sure! A commonplace for many, BLOG is absolutely a brand new idea for me. I am tremendously delighted that I finally catch the wave of fad, having the opportunity to be someone that is REALLY COOL!! *^0^*
Since this is my first post, truly, I am not in the mood to say anything that is "serious." Therefore, I would like to postpone my sharing of thoughts about education or English teaching till a couple of days later. At this moment, my brain is still amazingly full of thoughts about the power of imagery. What we did this afternoon was awesome, wasn't it? At the very beginning, I sort of distrusted it, casting doubts on its possibility to release a person's stress. Worse still, as we moved on to the "experiment" of using an imaginative Garbage Can to get rid of our anxiety and thus achieve the utmost relaxation, my doubts became stronger because that stinky garbage can filled up with tons of my stress just couldn't be carried away by the balloon. No matter how hard I tried, the garbage can along with the balloon remained there in my fantasy world. As I was about to give up trying any bit about guided imagery, the Desert Island and the Fairy saved me from my bad dream. There, on the island as well as in the world with the fairy, I MET MY MR. RIGHT, RESPECTIVELY! Believe it or not, my stress was totally gone with the wind! Nothing left! My goodness! It was really incredible! Starting off with doubts, I was finally in heaven! But, here comes the question: Should I attribute such unbelievable yet fabulous change to the power of guided imagery or to my prince? Anyway, I am more than satisfied with the ending.

Nick's first blog

2005-07-11T20:28:00.000+08:00

Dear all,
It's my first time using blog to publish my thoughts. I'm kinda excited. I'd like to talk about one of our biggest crises in education- lack of creativity. If we keep educating our young, those below 18, to learn almost all from the textbooks and little from other various resources, we will never catch up with the U.S. or other countries with more liberal learning environments.
If we never let our teenagers find out their true talents and develop them to the utmost, we're only wasting our educational resources for we give the wrong education to the wrong persons at the wrong time of their life. Not everybody has to be a scholar, it's plain to see. Why are we making students learn something they don't show interest or even willingness to learn? What we are doing is equal to teaching a bunch of mediorcre civil servants or office clerks. I have to admit I was glad a few students of mine insisted on reading their own books rather than the textbooks.
We sometimes laugh at how poorly American high school kids perform at school, but not after they get into college, certainly unlikely after they go to graduate school. Can anybody tell me why? Receiving knowledge only will not get you very far, you need to create new knowledge, by yourself and/or by teamwork. Who is more valuable, a receptor or a creator?

Nick( when not drunk)

The BLOG begins . . . join us now!

2005-07-11T18:58:00.000+08:00

Today, I sent students in the course a Word for Windows file on the principles of influence. For this Wed., please read section 1 on Dewey's Reflective Thinking Pattern. I would suggest printing the entire file out and keeping the print out as we will be referring to it often. On Wed., I will give you a number of articles and papers to copy for your reference as well. We don't use one particular text for the course but refer to a number of resources.

Also, for Wed., we will be covering Guided Imagery for the language classroom. There are a few resources of interest in the Files section of the class discussion webpage (you need to sign in with your yahoo ID to access this section of the page so be sure to associate your subscribed email address to the yahoo ID (follow the directions on the web).

I am also adding all of you to the "blog" . . . before Friday, you should sign in and setup your blogger account (free) and post your first entry to the blog . . . it should be on either guided imagery or improvisational language games and the language classroom. Before next Monday, you should have read your classmates' entries and short discussion post comments to at least three of them ("nice post" does not count as discussion). You do not have to begin this as yet, I will explain more on Wed. However, if you wish to . . . you may begin using the blog to post reflections or commentary upon your experiences in this or other ETMA courses or other posts related to the program or your thoughts on theory and application. In addition, you can already begin thinking about your own personal blog . . . I will be asking each of you to begin a blog (in English, so if you already have a Chinese blog you can either incorporate your English blog into that of create a new blog for this purpose). You may use Blogger (which is free) or any other system (my blog at http://briandavidphillips.typepad.com/brian/ has a list of blog resources listed in the right hand column towards the bottom). You do NOT have to do this now, but you may think about it and get started early if you wish.

Be sure to POST your SELF INTRODUCTION to the email list BEFORE FRIDAY of this week.

All the best,
Dr. Phillips

Welcome!

2005-07-05T23:22:00.000+08:00

Welcome to ETMA Matters, the blog community for students in the English Teachers Master of Arts program at National Chengchi University currently enrolled in courses taught by Dr. Phillips.

ETMA Matters

Anna's reflection paper

Wendy's Reaction Paper

April's Reaction Paper

Laura Liao's Reflection Paper

Jerry's reaction paper

Joyce's Reaction Paper (93951015)

Josephine's Reflection Paper

Claire's Reaction Paper

Selena's Semi-formal Reaction Paper

Nick's Semi-formal Reaction Paper

ETMA Matters

Pepa's reaction paper

Podcasting . . . MP3 Audio Broadcasting

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

Wanda’s Reaction Paper

Add Links to Your Bloger Page

Interactive Drama--a complex network of communication

Reflection on Interactive Drama

We have many roles to play in our life

Pearl's Response to Interactive Drama

ID is the best speaking activity ever

An Exciting Experience!

Intelligent way to acquire English-- ID ^_^y

Selena's Feedback

Megan's response to the Interactive Drama

Joyce's feedback

Sonia's Reflection on Roleplay-Interactive Drama

Feedback of Interactive Drama

Am I stupid??

On Role-playing

Treat our mother earth well

Interactive Drama . . . a good start . . .

Jenny's " You Can't Resist" by Heineken

Jenny is finally on the ETMA Blog

Who Is the Most Beautiful Lady?

I'm lovin' it!!!

Paulyta:boost your energy

The ad "Keep Kids Fit"

Pearl's Reflection on "A Slow Buyer"

A slower buyer

An Earth Care Webpage

Shiseido's suntan lotion "anessa"

Nothing but the "KFC"

Toyota: Your Best Choice

Have You "Kuro"ed Today?

Persuasion of Commercials

An old fried: Hey Song soda

Joyce's reflection on influence

On influence

Wanda's comment of advertisement

ETMA Matters

On Influence: Be a better man for a good cause

i'm lovin' it---Anna's reflection

What a wonderful class!

I think the class is pretty interactive

Anna's feedback on ILS

setting up your own blog

A Fascinating Experience

April's confession ......comes late!

Some words on guided imagery.

Good news for me!

It really worked!!

Sonia's Reflection on ILS

Wow! How fascinating !

Wanda's feedback on guided imagery

I just love games

Finally, I got in. ^_^

Vera's Feedback on ILS

Guided Imagery

Finally... I'm into the field of BLOG!!

Nick's first blog

The BLOG begins . . . join us now!

Welcome!

Vera's Reaction Paper ^0^