WEEK 1

We examined seven different speaking activities last week. I liked the

way we examined those activities, because we learned not only benefits of them

but also problems we foresee with those activities and learned some

modifications to prevent those problems. I think this is very beneficial, for it

enables us to learn how to discover drawbacks of an activity and how to correct

them.

Within seven activities that we learned last week, I liked two activities.

One of them is Role play. In this activity, students work in pairs. Student A is

the mother or father and student B is the son or daughter of Student A.

Student A is going to somewhere and he wants student B to do some chores.

Student B is supposed to reject them, for he has different plans. There is no

real communication in this speaking activity, because everything is given in the

role cards. Students may memorize information which is given and may not play

their roles. In order to prevent those problems we found some solutions.

Instead of giving everything in the role cards, only some clues can be given to

make students more creative and productive. Gülşen hoca suggested that we, as

a teacher, should give some examples and then want students to add four more

things. I like this suggestion, because it will help students be creative and make

activity a real communication.

Second activity I liked is drawing a picture. This activity is easy to use it

in a class. In this activity, one student describes a picture and other student

tries to draw it. There were some problems about this activity. One of them is

that it may make students frustrated, because they may not like drawing. There

are two different solutions for this problem. We may give pictures to the

students and want them to stick them on a paper according to description. I

think second solution is more useful. We can draw a picture on the board in a

clumsy way as a teacher , we let them laugh at us; then want them to make this

activity. Other problem is that only student describing the picture speaks, other

student listens and draw the picture. They can't speak equally in this activity, so

there can't be a real communication. Solution for this problem is really

effective. We give the students two similar pictures which have some

differences. They find those differences by asking each other questions, so real

communication can be provided :)

 

I suppose I need to focus more on preparing role cards. They are really

important . If I use a game as a speaking activity, it should have fun. Students

should participate equally in speaking activities. We should be careful about

time. Each student should have equal time to speak.

I believe I may use two activities I mentioned above in my teaching after

making necessary modifications.