a) Taking into consideration the macro and micro strategies that are offered within the strategic framework for the L2 teaching in the post-method era (See Kumaravadivelu, 1994), please comment on which of these strategies do you think your previous EFL teachers put into practice? Also comment on to what extent and how effectively they implemented them.
b) How do you think of integrating the macro and microstrategies suggested by Kumaravadivelu (1994) into your own teaching as a prospective EFL teacher? Where would these strategies stand in your own teaching philosophy?
What are the possible challenges and obstacles concerning the integration of the macro and micro strategies in the EFL context?
a) Throughout my student life, I had different EFL teachers in terms of the methods and techniques which they utilized in the course of lectures. When it is required me to apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies to my previous EFL teachers, I can easily say that they tried to use basically three of them: Facilitate Negotiate Interaction, Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills. Despite the fact that they were conventional teachers, they gave us enough freedom and encouragement to comment on topics, comprehend and clarify the unclear points and actively respond them during lessons. They always tried to provide interaction in the whole classroom, which undoubtedly improve learners communicative skills. In addition, they made use of meaningful contexts while teaching new words or structures rather than teaching them in isolation. In this way, we built bridges between our new linguistic inputs and this simplified our learning process. Finally, my previous teachers wove our English lessons by integrating all language skills which have unique importance in language learning. They attached enough importance to listening, writing, speaking and reading because all of them are interrelated and equally essential.
ReplyDeleteb) According to my own teaching philosophy, maximizing learning opportunities, facilitate negotiated interaction, promoting learner autonomy,integrating language skills and contextualizing linguistic input are the most important and primary strategies. They all provide a basis for effective language learning. As a teacher, I should have the ability of modifying my lessons creatively in the light of my students feedbacks and expectations and this will make them more active and interactive. Furthermore, during my lessons, I should provide my learners with contextualized inputs easifying learning. I should integrate all fundamental langauge skills because I think language should be thought holistically. Finally, I would like to teach my students how to learn and take the responsibility of their own learning. When they comprehend this conception, this will help them throughout their learning lives.
Their applications in classroom environment should require experienced teachers and broad perspectives. This may cause some possible challenges because every teacher doesn't have such qualities.
1.I have changed a lot of schools and teachers in my life. Some of them were really narrow minded, they were writing everything on the board and we write the same things in our notebook. However , others deserved the appreciation .Mostly, my teachers used integrate language skills and raise cultural consciousness. They believed that language should be taught as a whole so they never made emphasis on one area. For example, while they were teaching a subject or new vocabularies, we listened songs, read text, wrote model sentences and made conversation related the topic. They brought us interesting reading text, especially they were about American and English culture. These texts increased our curiosity and motivated us to learn a new language.
ReplyDelete2. All of his strategies are useful , I want to apply them in my lessons as much as possible but I really like two of them . They are” promote learner autonomy and foster language awareness”. Firstly I will teach my students how to learn a language. While introducing a subject I should be careful about my order and my activities. They ought to be simple and well organized so they see that learning a language quite easy. Moreover, I will help my students take responsibility for their own learning and bring about necessary attitudinal changes in them. I will increase the awareness of the nature of language and its role in human life and this will increase their motivation to language learning. I know that applying these into lesson isn’t easy task. I should utilize from technology and I must be open minded, understanding. One obstacle in front of me is myself because if I lose my enthusiasm to teach a language ,I will not be useful to my students.
1) In the past, i had a lot of EFL teachers, and some of them are stick to only one method, but some of them used post method era in our lessons.My teacher used Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills to apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies. For contextualizing linguistic input, he gave us various worksheets to teach us grammar, also he taught us grammer inductively with these varios activities. Also for integrating language skills in our lessons, he used various activities to improve our different skills of language; for example he used different activities which include listening skills, and he did many activities to improve our speaking skills.
ReplyDelete2) I think that most of the strategies are useful; for example,contextualizing linguistic input,integrating language skills, maximizing learning opportunities. I should teach my students by contextualizing linguistic input, that is, we should teach them with a context not only teaching the rules. Also, we should increase learning opportunities, and we should appeal to each student in the class, so we should have alternatives for each student. On the other hand all these things require hard work for teacher, and I may lose my desire to teach language.
a)Although I have several different EFL teachers, I think they generally put the same strategies into practice. For instance, they used integrate language skills apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies. However, my teachers’ not giving equal importance to all skills was the poor side of this macro strategy. In addition to that, they used contextualize linguistic input, too. It was successful, I think. My previous teachers used contexts which was really helpful for me to get the meanings of linguistic components more easily because it is possible to see every different structure in a text. Another macro strategy they used was raise cultural consciousness. This way was also helpful because the curiosity towards the language was increased and it encouraged us to learn the language.
ReplyDeleteb)In my opinion, nearly all the strategies of Kumaravadivelu seem so useful. The strategies I mentioned in the question above are really necessary, I think. For example, the syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse features can be understood in contexts which is the way of applying contextualize linguistic input. Moreover, there should be some motivation to encourage students to learn the language. I can do that by applying the macro strategy raise cultural consciousness. To make my students use language productively, I will also use integrate language skills. It is one of the most essential parts for teaching language. As language learning is largely an autonomous activity, promoting learner autonomy is also essential. I will help my students how to learn. That is to say, I will try to use the most useful and essential macro and micro strategies that Kumaravadivelu suggested as much as possible.
a)In the course of our learning English process I met many different language teachers and faced many learning strategies. My EFL teachers mostly used Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills to apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies. In terms of Contextualize Linguistic Input; to teach grammar our teachers gave us various worksheets, exercises etc. To learn grammar inductively it is important to use what you have learned. To achieve this we should use our inputs actively by using them linguistically. Our teachers made us to use actively what we learned in a sentence, in a context etc to give a meaning to the rule. This lead to permanent learning. As for the Integrate Language skills our teachers tried to teach all aspects of language. They just did not teach grammar or readng. They tried to collaborate speaking,writing,listening and reading skills. However they didn't achieve this aim completely. Because of the conditions, equal importance could not be given to each skill.
ReplyDeleteb)I want to integrate all aspects of language to teach English effectively and productively. I should create an atmosphere in which they can learn both rules and application of them. Learning should not be abstract only but it should be concrete. I also give importance to cultural consciousness. If I mention and teach to my students the culture of the learned language, it draws their attention and leads to more learning. And they see their taughts in natural contexts. I also give importance to Contextualize Linguistic Input. Students should not only learn the rules, they also should learn how to use rules in a meaningful context. I am in the opinion of using micro and macro strategies which Kumaravadivelu suggested as far as I can.
a-) When I started to learn English, I had a teacher for whom the speaking and pronunciation are more important than any other aspects of English. I was learning English, without being aware of it and this was really nice. I can not remember that I was studying grammar very much. We had some text, stories and while reading them we got the grammatic rules on our own without any special study on grammar. In other words, my teahcer was using the Contextualize Linguistic Input method. In addition she used integrate language skills by doing a lot of exercises on listening writing reading and speaking. Although there were certain obstacles like level difference of students, our teacher applied these methods effectively.
ReplyDeleteb-)The most important thing will be to get students' interest for me when I become a teacher. I should do my best to achice this . I don't want to explaing a rule to students directly, but I want to make them learn on themselves by seeing the rule's application in a text or something like that. I will use Contextualized Linguistic Input and Integrate Language skills method. The most probable obstacle for me will be the inadequacy of students' interests, but I have to get this interest without boring my students.
a)I think my previous EFL teachers generally put into practice "maximize learning opportunities", "facilitate negotiated interaction", "contextualize linguistic input" and "integrate language skills" strategies. They were creative teachers and I believe that they did their best to utilize the learning opportunities. Also the interaction in the class among the learners and teacher was effective. We as learners were actively involved in the lessons. My teachers were good at contextualizing the linguistic items. They didn't use to give input in isolated way. Moreover, they didn't use to give importance to only one skill in English. They used to integrate all the skills, so we could improve all of them. Therefore, I think my previous English teachers did their best when they were teaching English.
ReplyDeleteb) I want to use all the strategies in my language classes but in my opinion some of them are more important than others, such as; maximize learning opportunities, facilitate negotiated interaction, activate intuitive heuristics, foster language awareness, contextualize linguistic input, integrate language skills and promote learner autonomy. When implementing these strategies, I will probably encounter with some obstacles. Of course, not all students will be interested in English, so it will be difficult to utilize "activate intuitive heuristics" and "promote learner autonomy". Also it may not be easy to "integrate language skills" if I don't have the necessary equipment for teaching some skills like listening. However, I will try to use all of the strategies to make my lessons more effective and enjoyable.
A) Micro and macrostrategies which are fundamental for L2 teaching obviously are guidelines to teachers in their teaching process. The teachers take into consideration these strategies while constituting their own strategies and techniques. All effective teachers make good use of these strategies in their teaching. Among them the first one is to maximize learning strategies. My previous EFL teachers put this strategy into practice effectively. They created learning opportunities for us and increased our participation to the lesson. They did not care about only explaining the subjects, they also provide different sources, opportunities for our comprehension of the subject. The second one is to facilitate negotiated interaction which I think one of the most important strategy for learning because participation is always compulsory for an effective learning. This strategy is also used by my teachers. Our lessons were based on communication. My teachers always induced us for communication and interaction so that they could understand whether the student grasp the subject or not. Though interaction my teachers could give the feedback. In my lessons we did a lot of group activities which is a part of this strategy. Thus we could improve interaction. The third strategy minimizing perceptual mismatches was not used in my lessons because all my teachers were aware of our needs ,interest, social and cultural background so generally there were not so many mismatches between our teachers and us. The fourth strategy to active intuitive heuristics was used by my teachers as micro strategy: providing enough text for the student so that we could induce the grammar rules of the language rather than memorizing it. The strategy fostering language awareness can facilitate the learning and all my teachers used it effectively, firstly explained us why we need to learn a language and motivated us towards language learning. Contextualizing linguistic input another important strategy that my teachers used. Grammar rules, vocabulary, reading, speaking etc. cannot be taught in isolation. They should be given in a meaningful context, which we used in our lessons a lot. Our lessons included every skills in language: reading ,writing, speaking ,listening ,vocabulary. My teachers integrated all these skills in every lesson equally which show me that they use the integrating language skills strategy effectively.
ReplyDeleteB) While constituting my teaching philosophy I will definitely use good macro and microstrategies for L2 teaching. I think the most important ones are: maximizing learning opportunities, facilitating negotiated interaction, contextualizing linguistic input, integrating language skills. However, these strategies can be improved according to our own ideas and experiences in our career but they should always exist in a language teaching. When we are in teaching process we should provide students with a lot of opportunities so that they can understand the subject from different point. Interaction is an indispensible element in L2 teaching especially for speaking. With interaction students can get used to use the language effectively and according to their use, teachers can give feedback. Language cannot be learned in isolation so all the skills should be thought in a context. As a result of this students can give meaning to what they have learnt. These strategies are basic ones. As I said before they can be improved according to our ideas, students needs social and cultural background, feelings.
However, while we apply them we can encounter some problems about students, technology and applying them requires experience. When we gain experience in our career we can easily cope with these difficulties.
1) Well, actually I didn't encounter with a lot of ELF teachers. However, I experienced different kinds of strategies. My teachers liked using all different kinds of techniques. One of the most common activities in class was role playing. There were some comic series such as Sherlock Holmes, Robin Hood at the and of the chapters of or course book and we were acting out them. It was very useful for making some sentences simultaneously. It also was very funny at the same time. At that time, we had difficulty in concentrating on the lesson, so it kept our attention on the lesson.
ReplyDeleteOne of our teacher asked us to keep a diary during the semester. It helped me so much because I improved myself on behalf of expressing my feelings, my experiences in English. I learned to make some sentences without any pattern and these sentences were from my own life.
2) When I become a teacher, generally I will use most of the strategies suggested by Kumaravadivelu. However, I think, maximizing the learning opportunities is one of the most important strategies that should be used by most of the teachers. With the help of this strategy, learners can improve themselves with different skills.Facilitating negotiated interaction, contextualizing linguistic input, integrating language skills are some other basic strategies that I may use during the lessons. However, these are not enough for a teacher. We should change, improve these strategies according to the needs.
a)) All of the teachers in the world use teaching strategies whether they are aware of it or not.They have to make use of them in order to get the highest performance from the students.My teachers did also use this kind of strategies.My EFL teachers mostly used Contextualize Linguistic Input,Raise Cultural Consciousness,Facilitate Negotiate Interaction. They were always units which contains every kind of stuff about one topic.It was incredible.Even we could play some kind of games and they were very effective to draw student attention to the subject. The units as I metioned above were my best. They were quite well organized in terms of giving amazing information about other countries except for Europian countries.There were many interesting things which you can not detain yourself from just reading and learning them. In addition to these things, there were also very intelligient group-work activities which were good.
ReplyDeleteb)) In my opinion,Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro teaching strategies are much more usefull when they are used in approprate occasions.They can be utilized together. For example, in one activity while you are using a strategy in an other activity you can use the other.It is relative.However,as learning should be mostly student based, I would put much more importance on fostering language awareness. Because if the studen does not know why he /she should learn, he can not be succesfull. Mainly the reason should be known.
1)ı have had ELT courses for eleven years. I have had many teachers and some of them are good and some of them are untalented according to my own principles. I think ELT should be toughed as a life style not as a standart lesson. We should learn and live the language and culture of the society. Some of my teachers always want us to read books, write essays and do role plays from ready books. However, effective language teacher should only help us live the language. We do role plays not according to books but our own feelings and opinions. Some of my teachers on the other hand, are very good at helping students learn the language. They do not order us what to do but only share their experiences with us. They also think about general culture while teaching the language. We read text about economical situation of England or a famous scientist or artist.
ReplyDelete2)If ı were a teacher. ı would follow the teachers ı mentioned before. I would help students to learn the language not memorize. Especially I would make the lesson fun. In order to make this first ı help students to like the language learning. I would find interesting topics and give the grammar or reading text with them. I would do a lot of role plays because this is very effective way of teaching language experences. However, these role plays should not be prepared texts. Students should come and speak about a general topic that given them on that time.
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ReplyDelete1. Actually, my previous EFL teachers used to practice such strategies as ‘’Facilitate Negotiated Interaction, Contextualized Linguistics Input, Integrate Language Skills, Raise Cultural Consciousness’’ from Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies. They were successful in applying these strategies to the lessons and subjects they are supposed to teach. While they were lecturing, they were giving us enough freedom, time and encouragement to be ready to take part in the lesson and participate in commenting about the issue being taught in the class. They also used to make us feel comfortable while we were on the stage competing with a problem or let me say role play, for example. They were teaching vocabulary items in a contextualized form and made it easier to deduce the meaning of the word from the text and comprehend it much more simply. We used to read texts by not looking up the unknown words from the dictionary and our teacher wanted us to guess the meaning of these words from the upcoming sentence and discourse meaning of the sentence. In high school, one of my EFL teachers generally made us search about the English culture and when we came across something about English culture such as music, cinema and special days, he asked what we knew about them, but we couldn’t answer and so, he would say that knowing a language requires knowing its culture, also. I believe that it is also important to know the culture of the country whose language you study and I think I’ve got this idea from my previous teacher. Lastly, integrating all language skills with each other in an appropriate way carries the most importance itself and my previous teachers used to make use of all the skills of English in their lessons and to some extent their exams also. They spent enough time on speaking and make us encourage to speak and join conservation activities in class. They also brought stereo-tape in the class and made us listen some songs and dialogs and also they brought TV and we were watching and taking some notes about the movie we watched. These all strategies helped us to learn in an effective way and it was our teachers’ success to use these materials in an appropriate way, but we can think that it could be much more competent and professional if we compare them with the post method era teachers and strategies they use.
ReplyDelete2. When it comes to my own philosophy about teaching according to conveying these strategies, I can say that combining some of the strategies from Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies can be suitable and effective in my teaching classroom environment. For example, as a teacher candidate I am for the strategies such as ‘’Facilitate Negotiated Interaction, Contextualized Linguistic Input, Integrate Language Skills, Raise Cultural Consciousness and Promote Learner Autonomy’’. I want to make my students take part in learning process actively and cooperatively and in order to make them active in the class I think I should give them enough freedom to think about the issue and make them feel comfortable in front of their friends and also the teacher. Group work is one option for them to be cooperative and free enough to explain their own ideas about the subject. Moreover, I want my students to learn the vocabulary items from context by deducing words’ meaning from the context because giving vocabulary items separately to them cannot make any benefits for them, they can easily forget the meaning and usage also. If I teach vocabulary with its usage and meaning in it by giving it in discourse or in contextualized sentence, I suppose they are going to be clearer about the meaning and usage of it and they are going to remember it much easier. As a teacher candidate I want to use all the language skills effectively in the class environment, for example, listening and speaking can be taught in a sequence, firstly I can make students listen a story and then make them tell it out loud in the class individually or as a group activity and I absolutely give much more importance to writing and reading also. I want my students to know their needs, deficiencies and interests because I want them to realize how they can learn easily or what they need to learn easily. I make my students find their own strategies of learning and set up their own learning style while studying L2, for example, one of the students may learn much easier by chucking and I want her/his to realize this benefit. Finally, I think culture is very important factor while learning a language, so in order to teach some cultural items that will help them to understand some structures of language such as idioms or proverbs I am going to make my students watch some videos or movies that contain these ingredients.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there are some obstacles and problems while we, as teachers, are conveying these strategies to the subjects we are responsible to teach the students and to be able to deal with these problems we should be professional enough and flexible according to unpredictable conditions that we can come across.
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ReplyDelete1)My first English teacher(in 6th grade) was really an eunthiastic teacher. She was so energitic and eager to teach and make us contribute and involve in classes and activities. She tried her best to facilitate our interaction with her and class-mates by doing very colorful activities, with her jokes, songs,etc. By this way I mean with her different kind of activities and way of teaching she maximized our oppurtunities. To start to learn English with such kind of colorful teacher maked really good effects on my conception of English. In her class all of us were really active and we listened the courses eagerly. However I can't say the same thing for my left two years of middle school. Our teacher had gone and It's unbelievable but our Religious and Morals teacher started to teach us Englsih for substitute(for time being) Of course he had no strategies like our ''government'' in terms of English teaching. In high school's prep year we mainly focused on ''mastering'' grammer and we did it actually I guess. she was really qualified teacher and good at teacher grammer with standart ways. She didn't have any extraordinary strategies to teach gramer however we enjoyed the courses. She not only focused on grammer but also writing and listening. We maked a lot of writing homework. We also had another lesson under the name of ''Skills''.This lesson was also effective in integrating our 3 different skills. My last two years in highscool with my English teacher was really wonderful. The best years of my English learning adventure. The best strategy to explain his style, I guess, is ''Promote Learner Autonomy''. We were trying to get ready for the big exam YDS and he was the best teacher we could have in that time. His direction of us, making us conscious the things we were not aware of, his endless support, reinforcement, advices everything he made in that hard times of us was really admirable. He may not be in the catagory in which people describe ''good'' teacher who has a huge knowledge of English and is good at presenting and giving that knowledge. Neverthless, he was the best of all and beyond of that idea of ''good'' teacher for all of us.
ReplyDelete2)Kumaravadivelu's strategies are really helpful and made me get aware of the points I had never thought before. I will try to use them consciouslly as much as possible. The strategies I appreciate are these: a)Maximize Learning Oppurtunities. We are the one who should come up with different effective activities to do our best to make our students both learn efficiently and enjoy the classes. I want to create a colorful classrom atmosphere. b)Faciliate Negotiated Interaction. Not just a simple classic good teacher to student intereaction but I also want powerful student to student interaction. With my encouragement of them to speak and work more with each other, also with group activities and by giving them responsibilities for example about the arrangement of bulletin board and by this way making them feel important and contribute to the classes, I hope for a good classrom atmosphere. c)Foster Learning Awereness. d)Integrate Language Skills. Not just focusing on one kind of skills but also to make students improve four skills in together is the way going to the efficient teaching. e) Promote Learner Autonomy. I think it will be the my main strategy in my upcoming years as a teacher. f)Raise Cultural Consciousness. We always said to think in the target language so to think like them we know about a bit their culture, way of thinking and idea of life.
ReplyDeleteWhen we come to the challenges for me I think the main thing is our knowledge of ourselves. To develop our own strategy it is necessary to do self- observation, self-analyze, self-evaluation, etc. We should know our plus and minus and according to them we take our act.
Maybe the things like the environment we teach in, and the opputunities we will be given or the situation our student will be in( like preparing for an exam or aimimng to improve just one kind of skills) might be the obstacles we will face
(a)In my life as a student I have been bended to countless teachers and I believe that each of them has their own style in terms of practicing English. In my opinion, these were mainly Integrate Language Skills, Contextualize Linguistic Input and Raise Cultural Consciousness. I believe the ones who used Integrate Language Skills tried to imply different types of exercises for diversity is terms of activities they used in classroom management. Some of them tried to teach the language as a whole used Contextualize Linguistic. In addition to that they were aware of the fact that, the culture of a country has a great effect on ELT. Those who believed this was compulsory used Raise Cultural Consciousness. To sum up I believe they all had chosen the right strategies for their aims.
ReplyDelete(b)All of these strategies by Kumaravadivelu are essential in ELT so that I would also use most of them in my own way of classroom management. I think I would mainly give importance to contextualized text so that I would use Contextualize Linguistic Input. Secondly, I strongly believe that culture has a big role in language. To make my students learn about the culture of a society of which language we are studying, I would make use of Raise Cultural Consciousness. They may have some difficulty in understanding all the items in the text or they may feel strange about other culture but I can make them practice a lot and make them curious about other countries.
a) I have seen different types of ESL teachers in terms of the methods and techniques that they make use of in my student life. I think most of them used Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies. (Contextualize Linguistic Input) They gave us grammatical rules and taught us the grammar inductively. They used some worksheets for that. I can say that it is useful because, in my opinion, it is necessary to know some rules before making practice. However, it is not enough to teach only grammar; we also need to know other skills such as vocabulary, listening, speaking, reading etc. So, for that, they also used Integrate Language Skills apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies.
ReplyDeleteb) I think most of the strategies of Kumaravadivelu seem quite useful such as maximize learning opportunities, facilitate negotiated interaction, raise cultural consciousness, activate intuitive heuristics, foster language awareness, contextualize linguistic input, integrate language skills and promote learner autonomy, so I want to use them in my ESL classes. I believe that motivation to the course is the first step to teach and learn the language and I can do that by applying the macro strategy raise cultural consciousness. Furthermore, maximizing the learning opportunities is one of the most important strategies and it should be used by most of the teachers. With the help of this strategy, learners can improve themselves with different skills. And also, I think that culture is an effect on the language and language learning. Learners should grasp the spirit of the language and know about the culture of the language that we study on. So, for that, I can make use of raise cultural consciousness. To sum up, I can say that I want to combine these strategies in my classes.
a) Taking into consideration all the EFL teachers I’ve had up to now, I can say that most of them used more or less the same macrostrategies suggested by Kumaravadivelu. The first and the the most commonly used strategy is “contextualize linguistic input” since all of my teachers tried to use as many texts as possible to teach grammar and different structures. They also used “integrate language skills” which is really important according to me as language must be seen and taught as a whole. Unfortunately, although they tried to integrate all language skills, speaking seems to be given less importance, which is why most of us have difficulty in speaking fluently. Lastly, my teachers tried to “raise cultural consciousness”. I got this impression when I thought about my high school years during when my teachers used to provide us with materials which not only helped them teach the language but also gave me the chance to explore different cultures.
ReplyDeleteb) Although all the strategies seem useful to me, I think some of them are a little more important then the others. As a teacher, for example, I would give the most importance to “integrate language skills”, because I think language should be taught as a whole. Otherwise, I would have students who only understands a language but cannot use it productively. A good teacher, in my opinion, is the one who can help students to improve all language skills. I would also pay attention to the strategies “maximize learning opportunities” and “raise cultural consciousness”. “Contextualize linguistic input” would be also a strategy I would definetely use since it helps learning a language in a more permanent and productive way and it also eases “fostering language awareness” much more than teaching language just with some rules and simple examples.
Applying all the strategies in real classroom environment may be a bit difficult, but with experience and enough effort, I believe they can be used efficiently.
a) I had been learning English since my first grade at school because i was going to a private school and there they were teaching English from earlier age and I regard myself as a lucky student Therefore, İ have had many English teacher and they were all different from each other. however in general they were using nearly same techniques in lessons. Some of them were using Kumaravadivelu's micro and macro strategies and some of them were not. One of them was trying to integrate skills apart from vocabulary and grammar teaching. He was succesful actually because he used to bring tapes acoording to the topic that we were learning and i still remember the songs etc. He was very enthusiastic and he seemed to love teaching English to young learners because he used to use his all energy to make us interested in his lessons and we were looking forward to his lessons. I can say he was using some of the Kumaravadivelu’s strategies. With the help of him, I didn’t have any difficulties in high school when I was in prep class because I had already learned what the teacher in high school tried to teach to us. When it comes to choose what to do as a career, I chose to study English without considering so much because I know I am good at it and I am still thankful to my all English teachers.As we all know, EFL teachers try to use some strategies and generally they use Contextualize Linguistic Input,Raise Cultural Consciousness,Facilitate Negotiate Interaction. These strategies are fundamental for teaching EFL. By using these strategies teacher shape their own strategies of teaching.
ReplyDeleteb) According to my teaching strategy, I believe, the most important thing is student’s being involved into the lesson because you are teaching students and if they are not in the lessons your work is in vain. Therefore, using some strategies to make students be interested in lessons is inevitable. To manage this, I will use Kumaravadivelu’s Faciliated Negotiated Interaction, Raise Cultural Consciousness and Foster Language Awareness strategies.
In his essay, Kumaravadivelu numbers ten significant micro strategies to be used in post method era. All of these strategies are of great importance and are all proven to be effective and beneficial in foreign language teaching. However, it can be said that not all of them have been adopted by the FLE teachers all over the world. To talk about the situation in Turkey, we can say that the number of the teachers who try to utilize these micro strategies are much fewer compared to the overall average.
ReplyDeleteIt is a commonly agreed fact that foreign language strategies are quite poor in Turkey. Compared to all other countries, especially to the European ones, the success rate of the students in foreign language learning is relatively low. As the reason seems not to be due to low intelligence of Turkish students, it is strongly advised for FLE teachers and even the school managements to check out the current strategies they have been using.
Among Kumaravadivelu’s ten strategies, the one which teachers mostly fail to implement is “to promote learner autonomy.” Although learner centered teaching/learning is considered highly beneficial and essential by most of the teachers, the situation appears to be just the opposite when it comes to practice. The reason should be the difficulties of promoting students with more autonomy in the class. It might be hard for teachers to find appropriate activities and an appropriate way of conveying the knowledge to the students in a learner centered class. It requires the teachers to get the best performance with less speaking and intervention.
A second possible reason of this failure may be due to the fact that most of the students actually tend to believe that the more they speak about the topic, the more students will get informed and learn. As this notion contradicts with the truth, the results are not aroused as they are supposed to be.
As another problematic strategy, “maximizing learning opportunity for students” can be handled. The best and easiest way of providing them with this chance is to giving them homework, asking them to do research or assigning a project. Via these tools, the students will get the chance to be in interaction with the target language out of the class. From this perspective, it can be said that especially in recent years our country has improved its “homework conception.” With the new regulations, teachers are supposed to give more project based assignments which require students to use more creative and self initiative and they are expected to put into practice what they have learned in the classroom. However due to the lack of self-esteem and excessive interference of the parents into students’ school lives; these assignments are generally being done by an adult in order to get a better mark. Consequently, this micro strategy too, becomes harder to implement in real life.
Although so far the negative sides of the compatibility of Turkish educational system with the post method techniques are mentioned, it can be denied that Turkey has achieved a great success in revising and altering old teaching methods. The foreign language teachers are trained in accordance with the requirements of the post method era, and new regulations are applied in this context. Younger teachers are enthusiastic about utilizing these modern techniques and disciplines in their classes. To my opinion, about the future of foreign language teaching, a more positive and hopeful attitude can be adopted.
a) I have had a lot of teachers who use many different techniques and methods so far. If you ask me to evaluate their methods according to Kumaravadivelu’s micro and macro strategies, I can say that they made use of basically Integrate Language Skills, Contextualize Linguistic Input and Facilitate Negotiated Interaction. My teacher tried to integrate all the language skills into our lectures. Reading, writing, speaking and listening are balanced equally because all of them have equal importance in language learning. Furthermore, they always taught the new information in a meaningful context. Especially in vocabulary and grammar teaching, these strategies made our comprehension and retention easier and provided us with an effective learning process. Thirdly, they tried to set up an interactive learning atmosphere and encouraged us to involve in lectures actively. Thus, they tried to help us to improve our communicative language skills to some extent.
ReplyDeleteb) I prefer to use Facilitate Negotiated Interaction, Promoting Learner Autonomy, Integrated Language Skills and Contextualizing Linguistic Input. I am going to use Contextualizing Strategy so as to increase retention level of my students and reinforce their learning. I aim at teaching them how to learn by Promoting Learner Autonomy. This strategy is quite important for them because as a teacher it is not possible for me to be near them throughout their all learning life so they should develop their autonomy in learning new materials on their own. In addition, I am going to make them comprehend and use all language skills effectively and equally. So as to achieve this, I will practice upon different activity types which stimulate and improve different language skills such as speaking, listening or writing. It is nothing to know a language without using it for communication. Therefore, I am going to make them acquire communicative skills in an interactive environment and I am going to provide them to get into touch with me and their peers.
a)I began to learn English from fourth class and I changed so many teachers. Most of them used Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills to apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies. In the first term we learned grammar, did many exercises because learning grammar inductively is necessary. In this term you learn how to use grammar linguistically. After learning our teachers made us to use our English actively what we learned. However this method is not long-lasting. As for the Integrate Language skills our teachers tried to teach all aspects of language. Here we learned almost everything about the English. We are taught writing, listening and the way of improving speaking. Of course, they couldn’t teaching everything completely because each of them had different of teaching method and some students found it difficult
ReplyDeleteb)Comparing all the types of the strategies, I think almost all them are important and useful. What we have to do is to create convenient place for the students to learn English effectively. We shouldn’t just teach English. They should be informed about cultural consciousness. Because it will make them more enthuastic to learn English. Contextualizing Linguistic Input is also necessary and must be given importance.Because when students just learn English not knowing how to use it it doesn’t work. Actually, for being lesson more effective and enjoyable we have to try to use all of the strategies.
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ReplyDeletea)
ReplyDeleteWhen I look at my friends' comments, I see that most of us had the same kind of teachers. According to Kumaravadivelu's list, I can say that most of my teachers used "Integrate Language Skills" and "Contextualize Linguistic Input". I cannot say that always reading, writing and speaking were balanced, sometimes it was different; however, overall in my lessons, I saw that my teachers were trying to create a stability between these three.
b)
When it comes to me, as the teacher, I would definitely include "Integrate Language Skills" and "Contextualize Linguistic Input" also in my lessons. Especially the second one is the most important one, I believe, because even though I can say that my teachers at high school were trying to give lessons in balance, I think there was something missing. In a lesson, creating an atmosphere which makes students feel in the way they are really learning a language is very important for succeeding the learning process (I mean students should not feel that they are "memorizing" things in order to be graded. They should have the enthusiasm to learn, and this enthusiasm should be given by the teacher, and the way is to contextualize the artificial-seeming lesson. I mean if you make students feel that they are learning something real, if you create the atmosphere of that language in the classroom with a meaningful environment, then learning would happen by itself.)
In my lessons, I would definitely do that. I will not just hand out some materials and say "Okay, let's do this exercise, and then break." Before strting lesson, there will be a lead-in part, and I will create the atmosphere to teach my subject. (It will be most probably with the help of technology, I will use many different videos from native speakers, or I may give them real magazines or newspapers, or maybe I will start with a movie's 10 minutes... I do not know for now, but I am sure that I will give my lessons by creating a context, and I will not teach to punish with grading. Learning should be fun, not a punishment.)
b) I began to learn English from fourth class and I changed so many teachers. Most of them used Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills to apply Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies. In the first term we learned grammar, did many exercises because learning grammar inductively is necessary. In this term you learn how to use grammar linguistically. After learning our teachers made us to use our English actively what we learned. However this method is not long-lasting. As for the Integrate Language skills our teachers tried to teach all aspects of language. Here we learned almost everything about the English. We are taught writing, listening and the way of improving speaking. Of course, they couldn’t teaching everything completely because each of them had different of teaching method and some students found it difficult
ReplyDeleteb) Comparing all the types of the strategies, I think almost all them are important and useful. What we have to do is to create convenient place for the students to learn English effectively. We shouldn’t just teach English. They should be informed about cultural consciousness. Because it will make them more enthuastic to learn English. Contextualizing Linguistic Input is also necessary and must be given importance.Because when students just learn English not knowing how to use it it doesn’t work. Actually, for being lesson more effective and enjoyable we have to try to use all of the strategies.
a)I have met countless different teacher in my life as student and I just met two types of teachers. One group was following the traditional methods. They were following the Grammar Translation Method I think. The other group was using the post method era method. But most of teachers who belong to this group misunderstood the post method era method I think. Because they were doing something meaningless while they were just trying to be colorful teacher. But there were some teachers who fully understood this concept. They were using Integrate Language skills and more. And these kind of teachers contributed to me much.
ReplyDeleteb)I think Kumaravadivelu’s all strageties are essential in ELT. I will absolutely use almost all of them in my future life as a teacher. I will put emphasis on Integrated Language Skills because I believe not every student learns in the same way. Also I will make use of Raise Cultural Consciousness because I strongly believe that culture is the key to understand a laguage. I will adopt a way in which a language is thaught in harmony with the culture.
) So far, I have had various English teachers as well. I think very few of them were good teachers who are professional in their field. Because most of them had graduated from English language and literature not ELT. Nevertheless, they tried to do their best by using the techniques which they felt to be good for students. Among the techniques they used were: Facilitate Negotiate Interaction, Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills. They gave importance to communication in classroom. They always tried to encourage us to comment on the topic, discuss with each other, and to communicate with himself/herself and other students freely. Expressing ourselves clearly was crucial to them. We usually made use of a course book which was prepared according to the needs of the students, and our lessons were generally based on the course book. The course books helped the teachers to contextualize the lessons. Integrating the language skills was also one of the things they tried to apply. They did not stick to one skill. Reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary, They tried include all of them in their lessons.
ReplyDeleteb) All of the strategies proposed by Kumaravadiveluv seem useful and all teachers can benefit from them. In fact, I do not think English teachers of today especially in Turkey read such articles and try to improve their teaching. These strategies can make great contributions . I can choose three of them: Contextualize Linguistic Input , Integrate Language Skills, Facilitate Negotiate Interaction. We should teach our students by contextualizing the language, which means, we should teach by using a context not only teach the rules. This will help students use the language in daily life more comfortably. We should attach equal importance to all language skills. Because learning a language means learning all the skills, not only one or some of them. Lastly, we should allow our students to express themselves in English freely, they must not feel under pressure and they must be involved in the lesson actively.
1) In my education life, Most of my teachers used post method era during the class,while some of them were stick to old methods. They used Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills. For contextualizing linguistic input, they used some handouts containig a specific content to teach us grammar rules without make us bored. They also used integrating language skills in our classes. They used fun activities to improve our listening and speaking skills
ReplyDelete2)The best thing about these strategies is having the students interest and make them willing in the class. I remember some of my teachers using very old methods. Their classes were really boring. Even if i loved English, their boring lessons were just burden for me. As a future english teacher, I really want to teach my students as they are in a game not in a boring class.. :)
1-When I look at my previous EFL teachers, I can say that they basically tried to use two of the strategies: Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills. There were a heavy load in contextualize linguistic input because of exams. They gave us various activities like worksheets of vocabulary filling, memorizing etc in order to provide us with wide range of linguistic input. In addition, we were given multiple choice questions which were quite important to be successful in the exams like YDS. As for Integrate Language Skills, there were lots of activities to follow. They included speaking, listening, writing, reading and they gave importance to them all with the idea in their minds that learning a language does not only mean having the knowledge of grammar. While applying these different activities to classes we had fun and learned a lot.
ReplyDelete2- As for my teaching strategies, I will definitely include some parts of Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies and will make a great combination suitable for necessities of learners and conditions. It seems to me that, as a second year university student, I will mostly use Facilitate Negotiated Interaction, Contextualized Linguistic Input, Integrate Language Skills, Raise Cultural Consciousness and Promote Learner Autonomy because I am not a one-sided person and I wont let my students improve their skills in that way. I will create an atmosphere which will help and motivate them to improve themselves and learning skills. The classes will be full of creativity provided by both me and my students. They will feel free to express themselves, their feeling and thoughts. They will actively participate in the classes and will have chance to decide the flow of the lesson to some extent. They will have conscious to be prepared for the lessons and will question the information when it comes to accept them. I will do my best to give them chance to use their potentials to the full. =)
The drawbacks of these strategies may arouse when it comes to apply them effectively in every situation because in Turkey, as we all know, conditions and necessities of schools and students alike can change. In addition, the education system is so changing which may lead teachers to alter their strategies frequently and may obstacle them to use their strategies effectively. Apart from them, although our education system is very efficient in principle, it is not so in practical at all. It is exam-oriented and it is difficult for both students and teachers to underestimate this fact in learning process which will also create a drawback. Even if the conditions were quite good and sufficient for learning, it may be difficult to apply them in classes because the teacher must be well-equipped and must have a wide range of abilities, interests to meet the necessities of students and learning process which may make it difficult to apply the strategies to the full.
a) In the previous years, I had teachers as good as my current teacher. Actually, some of them were even better. My first English teacher was very sympathetic. She taught useful things but we did not get bored ever. She used motives to rise our willing to listen. She was closed to me. Even sometimes, I helped her in preparing the lesson. However, in terms of using strategies my teacher in high school was best. She tried to integrate many skills into lesson such as; vocabulary, listening, reading. She prepared us many enjoyable activities. She gave us little prizes for each question we answered correctly. Overall, the most important thing was that she was very enthusiastic. She loved her job. Therefore, her energy affected our lesson and made it an effective lesson.
ReplyDeleteb) Promote learners autonomy and contextualizing linguistic input are the strategies that I would integrate my teaching. Promote learners autonomy is very important, because they should be aware of what they are doing. They should do everything consciously. We know that learners may forget easily what they have learned if they learned just for the sake of learning. They should take their own learning responsibility. Contextualizing linguistic input is indispensable for true teaching. As I mentioned before learners should not memorize but learn. If the instructor provide a true environment and do not force learners to memorize, they will learn permanently. Language is not to be separate from culture and environment. Therefore, the teacher should combine them with lesson. Actually, I think there are not many obstacles. If we do our teaching willingly, we can tolerate the difficulties.
a) My previous EFL teachers were mostly traditional ones. However, they used some strategies that are related to the post-method era. These strategies were Facilitate Negotiate Interaction, integrate language skills and raise cultural consciousness. First of all, they gave great importance to interaction. They always encouraged us to talk and participate into the lessons. That encouragement was to improve our communicative skills. However, they lacked forming a suitable situation for us to communicate. The other strategy was integrating language skills. They never divided the lessons like vocabulary, listening or speaking teaching. They always give all at the same time integrated with each other. It’s a good thing I think. Because dividing teaching is hard and I think teaching should be taken as a whole. For example, while listening exercise, we also focused on vocabulary and grammar. The last one is raising cultural consciousness. While learning the target language, we also learned about its culture. We became aware of the differences between our culture and the foreign culture.
ReplyDeleteb) These strategies are all important but I think most important ones are facilitate negotiated interaction, promoting learner autonomy,integrating language skills. First of all, I would make students be aware of their responsibility in their learning process. They should take the teacher as a guide, and make an effort to learn. Therefore, they should gain autonomy. Secondly, I would focus on interaction. I would form a suitable situation in which they can interact with their class mates and teacher. While doing this, they would gain communicative skills and be able to use the language for their pragmatic purposes. Lastly, I would focus on integrating language skills, because I think that language should be taken and taught as a whole. I will focus on these strategies mostly, but it doesn’t mean that I won’t use other strategies. Of course, I will sometimes use other strategies as well. To apply these strategies into the classroom environment, the teacher should be creative and have a creative ideas, We are faced traditional methods throughout our education. Therefore, it will may be a hard to be a creative teacher. It can be the most important challenge one may face.
a)During the years I had a lot of different teachers.Each of them had his/her own style.However,the strategies they used were generally the same.The most common used strategies were Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills of Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies.
ReplyDeleteUsing the Contextualize Linguistic Input they taught us grammer.Firstly,they expain the rule.Then they wrote a sample sentence on the board and explain the rule on that sentence.Later on, they gave us sheets with samle sentences and we had to identify the rule in that sentences.Afterwards,we had to build sample sentences by ourselves.Finally,each of us had to write one sentence on the board so that we discussed the rule.
In means of Integrate Language skills we not only learned grammer of course.Beside reading,writing and listening skills we also had speaking skills.For example we watced a film and had to summarize it.Then we got a sheet full of comprehension questions and had to answers them in full sentences/paragraphs.
b)I think I will use different strategies such as Facilitate Negotiated Interaction, Promoting Learner Autonomy, Integrated Language Skills and Contextualizing Linguistic Input.Using Contextualizing Linguistic I will encourage them to learn more and get the feeling of really learning something .Not only with the intention to get good grades but also to have fun and the will at learning.I will do different activities with them.They should enjoy learning english.It shouln not be boring and they shoul not feel forced to learn.Sometimes I also will ask them for feedback,what they like and what they do not like at our lessons.Due to this I also will create lessons time to time.What I certainly will also focus on is speaking skills.I think the most deficite of ELT students are that they understand everything, but can not speak fluently.I will encourage them and will impose them the feeling that they can do it.However, I think there will be a lot what I will learn the next two years and will try to include these in my lesssons in future.
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ReplyDeletea)My previous teachers of English had their own styles, but these styles were not critically different at all. They had common strategies which are Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills.
ReplyDeleteAs a necessity of Contextualize Linguistic Input, inductive learning of grammar was applied which is also the most classical way of teaching grammar.
As for Integrate Language skills, different skills of the language like speaking, listening, writing and reading were mastered. My teachers used classical ways of developing these skills. These ways were activities like watching videos, listening to contextual audio materials, dealing with reading passages, etc.
b)I want to apply as many of the strategies as i can to my teaching method. But, some of them will be more dominant. These are Promoting Learner Autonomy, Contextualize Linguistic Input and Integrate Language Skills. Promoting Learner Autonomy is one of the main parts, because the learner needs to shape his/her own style of learning. S/he should have a better understanding of how s/he learns best. Contextualize Linguistic Input is an inevitable style in language teaching classes, because it provides permanent learning of grammar. And Integrate Language Skills is mainly necessary, because it provides the improvement of listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. These developed skills bring the learner a better ability to communicate.
ReplyDeletea-I can't say I had encountered many English teachers previously.I started to learn English in high school and I only had two English Teachers. They were basically using Integrate Language Skills Contextualize Linguistic Input and Facilitate Negotiated Interaction and Raise Cultural Awareness of Kumaravadivelu's macro and micro strategies.We were learning vocabulary integrated with reading and listening songs and dialogues.We were working mainly on grammar and testing;matching,fill in the blanks,multiple choice exercises etc. I personally kept a diary for 2 years and it did help me a lot with my writing.For one semester,our English teacher brought a Canadian teacher to help us with our pronunciation.But the school administration didn't negotiate with the teacher and she gave up. Except this, we didn't study on pronunciation if I didn't count learning by listening different accents.They mainly used conventional means of teaching.
ReplyDeleteb-) When it comes to my own teaching, I think all of the Kumaravadivelu strategies sound good as long as we can effectively apply them. I would mainly try to implement Facilitate Negotiated Interaction, Promoting Learner Autonomy, Integrated Language Skills and Contextualizing Linguistic Input.We should maximize learning opportunity for students and make them to take responsibility for their own learning. I would direct them to make research and group and individual projects so that they could develop self esteem. Also, it is important that they are familiar with some cultural concepts of the target language.In this way they could easily understand why some concepts can't be translated or applied to the their native language.The learning process is a whole and should be integrated and enjoyable.This would be what I would endevaour for in my own class.
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