Professional Documents
Culture Documents
AR629 005 Padilla Internal PDA
AR629 005 Padilla Internal PDA
Stage 2
- A learner centred class. I believe that a student centred classroom is not a place where the Commented [NM1]: But it certainly can be? Do you
mean to add only?
students decide what they want to learn and what they want to do. It’s a place where we consider
the needs of the students, as a group and as individuals, and encourage them to participate in the
learning process all the time. The teacher’s role is more of what Scrivener calls an enabler, who
acts more like a 'guide' or a resource of information' when needed’. In a learner centred
environment, students talk more and learn from each other. Commented [NM2]: Yes, this is a key aspect.
- The teacher should encourage learner independence. As Harmer states ‘however good a
teacher may be, students will never learn a language unless they aim to learn outside as well during
class time.’ (2001: 336) To become autonomous, learners need to develop the ability to evaluate
their own learning and effective study skills. Teachers can promote this by including learner training
exercises in the lesson and make students reflect on their own learning, their strengths and their
weaknesses, and also make them think about the tasks they do in class, and why they do them. Commented [NM3]: Yes, but also suggest and train
them to do tasks out of class too?
- Variety is the spice of language. The teacher should vary the types of lessons (productive or Commented [NM4]: Nice!
receptive skills, grammar, lexis, etc) and classroom activities and students interactions in order to
keep the students engaged. Similarly, by giving a variety of interesting topics and activities, Commented [NM5]: And to cover all facets of the
language.
students will be more motivated and interested.
Giving instructions I use clear and simple language which is graded to the learners’
level. I also chest my instructions, use gestures and imperatives. Commented [NM8]: Yes, you do!
The success of an activity generally is in the instructions. Commented [NM11]: I wouldn’t go that far – the
success of an activity is in it’s aims being suitable for that
stage of the learning and it’s aims being achieved. But
Enabling a friendly working I have respect for my students and they generally respond well to certainly effective instructions are key to allowing this to
happen.
atmosphere me. I am sensitive to students needs I try to give equal
opportunities of participating to all. If students do not feel Commented [NM12]: Yes, this also came out clearly in
LSA0.
comfortable, they will be less likely to participate and learn.
Commented [NM13]: Indeed.
Weaknesses Reason
Keeping time I am not good at estimating how long a task will take. I usually
plan too little time for each activity or plan too many activities that
I want to get through in just one lesson. As a consequence I
sometimes don’t meet the aims of the lesson or have to cut out
the freer practice and feedback stage.
Exploiting emergent language As I don’t want my lesson to get sidetracked, I sometimes ignore Commented [NM15]: This wasn’t as clearly an issue as
the other two in LSA0.
language that comes up. The teacher should react to the
language that emerges in the classroom and not just the
language within the lesson plan, as it is a chance for upgrading
and expanding what students already know. I was told this by my Commented [NM16]: Completely agree.
Improve my ability to exploit - Observe another teacher and complete an Before LSA2
emergent language observation task (Appendix 3)
I have tried to include a range of tasks that might help me improve my weaknesses. I will implement
some as soon as possible, some in the next couple of weeks and some throughout the course and
after.
Using of hot feedback will be useful, as it will help me record how my actions affect students’
learning. In addition, I will also discuss my reflections with my peers after being observed and
observing. Reading will help me with ideas for new ways of approaching feedback and emergent
language.
Improve my I’ve become more aware of All these points were useful tools. Commented [XX27]: Why? You need to give some
details.
ability to exploit exploiting emergent language as a PLEs, for example, helped me think
emergent result of: about the opportunities of teaching
language - observing my colleagues react to and upgrading emergent language
the students in class that I had missed and how I could Commented [XX26]: using which task? How was it
effective?
- writing post lesson evaluations. have exploited it. However, I
- reading Sandy Millin’s blog post on definitely have to work on this aspect
emergent language. further as I still sometimes ignore Commented [XX28]: Why? Being able to answer this
question will help you to find the solutions for not doing so
chances to upgrade. in the future.
Weaknesses Reason
Respond to learners and to what I sometimes stick to what I have planned even though it
is happening in the classroom would be far more beneficial for students if I adapted to the
with more flexibility circumstances, by making a task more challenging if it is too Commented [XX29]: You need to ensure you are
ready to do this is LSA4 by anticipating problems in depth.
easy or vice versa, by changing interaction patterns or
shortening an activity if it isn’t working. Commented [XX30]: or adapting?
Action plan
and complete an observation task (appendix 7) Commented [XX35]: simple but effective, although
not much guidance for the observer, they need to know
- Have a colleague observe me and complete what they’re looking for.
appendix 7
Exploit pair work - make sure I plan enough time to encourage Immediately
pair work before whole class work.
- Peer editing: have a colleague look over my
plan to see if I’ve included enough pair work
- A learner centred class. This has been strengthened, particularly after observing Ciaran teach
his experimental lesson (community based learning) in which the students took control of the class
and worked as a team mostly ignoring the teacher. Commented [NM36]: Presumably effectively? Why
so?
- The teacher should promote learner autonomy. This was strengthened. Listening to authentic Commented [NM37]: Really? He’s supposed to be
providing accurate models throughout the process.
podcasts in their own time gave the students a sense of achievement and it encouraged them to
listen to more. Commented [NM38]: Good to hear!
- Variety is the spice of language. This has been reinforced. While some students find having
different teachers every class a bit disruptive, they all definitely stated they enjoyed the variety in Commented [NM39]: And hopefully benefitted from?
New beliefs:
- Skills need to be taught and developed. My LSA0, 2 and 3 made me see that practising reading,
speaking and listening is not enough and students need to be made aware of the different sub-skills
that are involved and what strategies they can employ. Input sessions and feedback with tutors also
made me aware of the importance of student reflection. As a skills lesson is less tangible than a
systems one, unless there is any discussion, students are less likely to realise what they have done
and have learned. Commented [NM40]: Yes, good to hear.
- Student feedback and questionnaires are good and necessary. Feedback gives some insight Commented [NM41]: Effective?
into how the lesson was perceived by the students - if it was effective, enjoyable, what activities
they preferred, how much they felt they learnt. By giving them the chance to voice their desires,
needs and problems students feel they are taken into account and the teacher can adapt
accordingly.
- Teaching the phonemic chart is a sound choice. My experimental practice helped me see that Commented [NM42]: Nice pun!
teaching the phonemic chart is doable in a lesson and that students actually really enjoy and
appreciate it. Students need to produce all the sounds in English from the beginning. By presenting
the phonemes the way Underhill does it helps students see the physicality of the sounds which
helps them produce them accurately. This has a positive effect on both speaking and listening Commented [NM43]: Yes, definitely time well spent.
skills.
- Peer editing. Talking through my plan with a colleague really helped me to see things from a
different perspective and tweak anything I wasn’t happy with. Commented [NM46]: OK, here it’s clear how the
different perspective helped, but again a clear example
would be helpful.
- Writing PLEs. Reflecting is key for professional development. It allowed me to go into more depth
Commented [NM47]: How did your reflective skills
as to why something did or didn’t work in class and if it didn’t, act on it. improve during the course? Which aspects particularly
helped you?
- Experimental practice. It has encouraged me to try new things and get out of my comfort zone. Commented [NM48]:
Research - Reading EFL blogs as often - To give me new ideas Commented [NM53]: Which ones?
as possible
- To deepen my knowledge of
- Books (on methodology, teaching approaches
skills, systems) once or twice a
term.
Lesson stage What does the student say? How does the teacher react? Outcome
Name drill Give my students my name and tell them one interesting piece of info 5’
about myself. Ask the person sitting next to me to repeat my name, my
info and then say their name and interesting piece of info. Repeat with
all ss.
GTKY- Ask ss to think f a nb from 1-15. I read the sentence on my handout 15’
Present (with new vocab. item). Elicit meaning.
new Students draw sentence in box.
vocabulary
Repeat a couple of times.
GTKY- Tell ss they have to get up and talk to sb they haven’t spoken to yet. 20’
Mingle They have to show each other their pictures and they have to guess
what expression each drawing is referring to.
Feedback Ask a couple of ss for an interesting/funny/ surprising piece of info they 10’
on content learnt from their partners.
and Sentence race: Divide ss in small groups. Tell them they will be
language correcting sentences they said. One person in each group is the runner
and they have to come up to me and pick a sentence, they go back to
their group and correct it together. They show it to me, if correct they
keep it and take another, if not they have to go back and try to correct it
until they get it right. Winner is the team with most sentences.
(Somogyi-Tóth 2012:31)
Write down in the appropriate column how the teacher clarified the emergent language:
Write down any incidental language that the teacher didn’t clarify or any other comments
about the lesson:
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(Self-made)
Activity Used Aim / Purpose Effect on Learners How Else it Could be Used
In pairs, Ss choose 5 expressions with get to develop Ss' lexis of Ss were serious but Best for higher level
that are interesting to them -- look up a expressions w/ get; to very engaged with learners; useful for other
defintion and write an example sentence for make expressions more the discussions / with expressions with
those 5; then redivide the class and peer memorable & personal; to their own learning de-lexicalized verbs
teach the phrases they learned develop learner training throughout
Stage Activities in the original lesson plan Timing This is what happened in the lesson Discussion points: reasons for
changing the original plan
1 Give ss social media vocabulary 19:05 Brainstorm examples of social media as a T added a stage to start lesson in a
worksheet and elicit meaning of words. whole class. more ss centred and natural way.
Better than starting the lesson with
Ss talk to their partner about their favourite
a worksheet.
social media.
Feedback
3 Watch the film again and consider what 19:41 This stage was combined with the following Ss didn’t need to watch video again
status updates the man makes and how as they all remembered the details
Ana Padilla - Professional development assignments - Part A 22
does he feel. one in the original plan (stages 3 and 4). pretty well.
Feedback.
4 Show the film again and stop after each 19:57 Combined with previous stage (3)
update. Focus on:
5 Ask ss what the film’s message is. 20:01 Error correction. T writes on WB error ss Had already discussed question in
made. stage 5 of the original plan, so T
jumped to error correction.
Observing how the teacher adapted the lesson to how the students responded was really useful in that helped with the flow of the lesson.
Write down in the appropriate column how the teacher clarified the emergent language:
Write down any incidental language that the teacher didn’t clarify or any other comments
about the lesson:
The lesson revolves around a sentence on the WB ‘Had he seen the sawdust he wouldn’t have died’. T highlights the
key words and they make questions about them in order to find out what happened to them man the sentence is about.
T write up incidental language (as seen above and in the picture below) as they come up with questions, clarifies and
upgrades it (e.g. ‘an important object to him’ --> ‘a sentimental object’, ‘constructor’ --> ‘construction worker’).
There is some drilling, but there could be more and T could mark the stress of a word and the phonemes of problematic
sounds. Also writing the form and maybe some collocations could be useful.
(Self-made)
1. SECTION 1- COMMENTARY 2
1.5. Bibliography
3. SECTION 3 - APPENDICES
As English is not a phonetic language, the written forms does not correspond with the spoken form
and that often confuses students. And due to the fact that learners have little control over the
speaker's stream of speech, they need to be able decipher this stream into words and meanings.
Additionally, while learners do not need to aspire to perfection and sound as 'native' as possible,
they do need to be intelligible. An interesting and very true thing Underhill (1994: 118) mentions is
that pronunciation is not like other areas of language: students need all of the sounds in English
from the get-go in order to speak. So it is important we introduce the phonemic chart at the
beginning of a course.
His approach to teaching the phonemic chart is one of learner awareness raising. He suggests
presenting the sounds in a 'physical, muscular way, and to use the phonemic symbol as a visual
hook for that physical and auditory experience.' (1994: x) He advices to do this by miming and
gesturing and starting with monophthongs to later move on to diphthongs, e.g. with /i:/ he suggests
to ‘smile’ and with our hands gesture the sound coming out of the mouth to represent the length of it.
Once the teacher has gone through the all monophthongs, they can simply build the diphthongs
from monophthongs or by miming. 'The building and the miming approaches complement each
other.' (ibid: 21)
As many times students have not mastered how to use their muscles to produce the correct
sound, they are often not able to reproduce what their teacher says. This is why employing a
non-verbal presentation is more beneficial as it implies that the sounds come form the students and
not the teacher. Additionally, using mime and gesture sensitizes learners to ‘the visual component
of the articulation of sounds’ (ibid: 127) This is the movement of lips (spread/rounded and
back/forward), tongue (forward/back or up/down), jaws (up/down) and throat. Once the students
are aware of these ‘muscle buttons’ they understand what has to be done in order to produce
sound in an acceptable way.
Another key element in Underhill’s approach is making use of the chart’s layout. By presenting
the chart as a map of the mouth it makes pronunciation more concrete as it shows how and where
the sounds are made. By ‘where’ he refers to place of articulation in the mouth (these muscle
buttons I mentioned above), e.g. consonants on the left of the chart are made at the front of the
mouth with the lips, e.g. /p/, /f/, and /m/. By ‘how’ he refers to how the flow of the voice (on/off) and
air (through nose/mouth) are. To make students aware of this it is a good idea to tell students to put
their hand on their throats and notice the presence or lack of vibrations.
By presenting the phonemic chart as Underhill suggests, we can raise learners of the physical
actions they have to do to produce the sounds in English.
I think pronunciation is an important part of learning a language and an aspect that teachers should
focus more attention on. When teaching and observing other teachers I make sure to drill and note
down problematic sounds for the students on the the whiteboard in phonemic script. I have
presented some phonemes before, but only when clarifying problematic sounds.
One of my beliefs stated in Stage 2 of my PDA is the importance of encouraging learner
autonomy. And presenting the phonemic chart, facilitates dictionary use and learner independence
by enabling them to look up a word and identify the sounds its made up of without the help of a
teacher. It also simplifies selling problems, such as the seven uses of ‘ough’. The link between
sound and spelling is not always obvious. 'Dickerson (1987) rightly points out that there are rules largely
governing the link between spelling and sound, and such rules may guide the learner' (Hancock: 1994)
Another belief of mine is the importance of a learner centred class. And even though during the
presentation stage the attention is pretty much on the teacher acting out the sounds, it is the
learners who produce them and not the teacher expecting students to repeat after them.
Many of my students in my current Advanced (B2/C1) class have stated that they need and want to
improve their pronunciation. When clarifying any pronunciation problems that emerge during
Ana Padilla - Professional development assignments - Part B (Experimental Practice) 3
lessons they have mentioned to me they do not understand the phonemes when I write them on the
board and would like to do so. I feel they will enjoy and benefit from this particular approach to
learning the phonemic chart as it will make them think about how and where they produce the
sounds in their mouth rather than just try and imitate me.
As for my professional development, I hope that by presenting the phonemic chart I will
become more comfortable teaching it in my future lessons.
Based on this I have outlined the following objectives:
From the learners’ point of view:
- learners will be more aware of where and how the sounds are produced in their mouths.
- learners will produce the sounds accurately
- learners will practised reading and producing the sounds in isolation /i:/ and within the
context of a word /ʃi:p/
From the teacher’s point of view:
- I will elicit the sounds from the students through mime and gesture
- I will only produce the sound myself after the students have done so and if necessary
In order to identify if these objectives have been met I will do as follows:
- I will device a questionnaire (appendix 2) which I will hand out in the last five minutes of the
lesson for the students to complete. This will allow me to see how the learners felt about the
way I presented the language and if they felt they learnt and saw the use of learning the
whole phonemic chart in one go.
- I will give an observation task for my colleagues to complete while observing me, and pay
attention to how the students react to my lesson, what thins are positive and what things are
negative about the lesson.
Bibliography
I was happy with how the lesson went as the students seemed to really enjoy it and I managed to
meet my objectives. While it was a little time-consuming to teach in that it took up a whole hour,
from the students' feedback (see appendix 4) I discovered that they all found the lesson really
useful. They stated that having me mime and act out the sounds instead of produce them and
make them repeat after me was helpful in that it showed them (and made them think) how to
produce the different sounds.
Another strength of the lesson was that I used lots of games to support the learning which kept
the students engaged and provided plenty of practice for them to remember the sounds that the
different phonemes represent. Also, I managed to reflect on the use of the phonemic chart as a
whole class and encouraged students to download the sounds app. to promote learner autonomy.
However, I did take the students a bit of time until they got into the swing of the lesson, as they
felt slightly awkward at the beginning. Another weakness to consider, was that although I managed
to present all of the phonemes on the chart, and gave the students plenty of controlled practice
through competitive games, some freer practice would have been beneficial. However, their
phoneme knowledge could be consolidated throughout subsequent lessons with
awareness-building exercises of minimal pairs, for example. Working on the difference between /i:/
and /ɪ/ or /s/ and /z/ could be a good option.
I feel teaching this lesson was beneficial to me as a teacher as it took away some of the
discomfort and anxiety I felt towards teaching the whole phonemic chart in a lesson as it helped me
see that presenting it within a lesson is perfectly possible and students actually appreciate it and
see its use.
In the future I would definitely like to teach it to my students at the beginning of a course, as this
would imply that when clarifying problematic features of pronunciation on the board students will
actually be more aware of and understand what those ‘strange letters’ mean. However, I may
introduce the phonemic chart little by little in order to not overwhelm learners with so many sounds
and their corresponding symbols.
One way to get students more familiar with the phonemes is by playing games (such as
phonemic board race to practice phonemes students have real difficulty with or back to the board).
Focusing on pronunciation in an enjoyable and light way makes them feel more comfortable and
makes the topic less ‘scary’ and more manageable. This would be particularly good with teenage
classes. Young learners, on the the hand, often find the symbols too abstract, so in their case I
would only introduce the sounds that are are identical or close to the letters of the alphabet.
Objective of the experimental practice: find out what the learners’ reactions to learning the whole
phonemic chart through mime and gestures are.
Main aim: By the end of the lesson students will be better able to recognise and produce the
sounds of the phonemic chart in isolation and simple words.
Subsidiary aims: To raise students’ awareness of tools they can use to practise English outside
the classroom.
Procedure:
Presenting the Look at my mouth and say this sound: T-s 10-12’ Phonemic
Monophthongs in chart
the phonemic Silently mouth the /i:/ sound and use
chart gesture.
/ʌ/
/ɒ/
Write on board
Presenting the Point to /ɪ/ and /ə/. Tell ss to merge T-s 7-10’ Phonemic
Diphthongs in the them. Ss produce /ɪə/. Model and chart
phonemic chart correct if necessary.
To draw attention
to the physicality of
diphthongs
To give ss practice
in recognising the
diphthongs
phonemes
Controlled First point to some phonemes and the T-s 7-9’ Phonemic
practice ss form words as a whole class, e.g.: chart
/pɪg/ /aɪz/ /aɪs/ /bɪə/ WB
To give ss practice
in recognising all If time, play hot seat:
the phonemes in Divide class in 2 or 3 teams. S-s
the phonemic chart One person in each team has to have
and
their back to the WB.
I will write a word in phonemic script on
WB. The people looking at the WB have
to describe it to the person with the
back to it.
The first person to guess it, earns a
point for their team.
Error correction Write any errors or nice language heard T-s 2-3’ WB
during discussion and hot seat on the
WB. S-s
Materials
Phonemic chart
White board
Self-made questionnaire
Post-it notes
/ðəfəʊni:mɪkʧɑ:t/
Some sound advice: Sounds: the pronunciation app also helps you study, practise and play with in
an interactive phonemic chart wherever you are.
Answer the following questions individually. You can then discuss them in pairs.
1) How did the teacher present the sounds? Did they make the sound and then make you repeat or
2) From 1-5 how useful do you think it was to present the sounds this way? (1= not useful, 5= very
useful) Why?
3) Do you think that familiarising yourself with the phonemic chart helps improve your English?