REFLECTION

In the third semester, I have been exposed to reading and vocabulary skills. Through
learning, I have learned a lot of knowledge about how to teach students to read
effectively. Using the way you have been taught, I have found my students increasingly
understand what they have read and their vocabulary increases. This is a start that is
amazing.

I express my thanks to Miss Yeoh Phaik Kin to have a lot to teach us. For as long as I
seek knowledge from her, it motivated me to become English teachers at my school
very well. This is because; she taught many techniques attract my interest to practice to
my students at school. I have got a wealth of experience during her teaching. Although
our meeting with Miss Yeoh is only 10 hours, but we can get many information trough
her lesson.

In my lesson, teaching reading is to teaching students how to understand it. Although I

understand this concept, it is difficult for me to put this notion into practice. But, it
provided us some tips or techniques such as the use of “fish bone” or mapping to teach
reading comprehension. When completing the figure of “fish bone,” students can
construct the meaning of the story or article by analyzing the content. The top-down
process of teaching reading is aimed to develop student as active readers, rather than
merely listening to the teacher explaining the reading message. Besides the reading
materials given, students can complete the fish bone with their own experience and in
the following activity write their own stories. The integration of reading and writing skills
facilitates students’ development of English proficiency more quickly.

I can hardly recall all the details. What I remembered is that each student read out one
sentence of the article and after that the teacher explained the content of the article.
The disadvantage of this way to teach reading is that students only paid attention to the
particular sentence they were participate for. This was not the real purpose of reading. I
agreed with Yeoh’s advice that the teacher could give time for students to read the
article silently even though they might face some challenge or difficulty in the process of
reading. To solve the problem of reading difficulty to certain students, some training of
reading strategies is necessary. For example, the teacher can introduce how to skim
and scan, how to look for key words, and how to take notes or highlight. I think students
will benefit a lot from using these reading strategies.

In this semester we were given an assignment to find articles related to the skills of
reading, what a problem to us is quite like to get articles through newspapers and
magazines. But with the sophistication of the technology, we can also access and
download the materials in the form of newspaper and magazine clippings related to the
topic. When the material was able, I started drawing to make graphic organizer for every
article I have read. Although some what complicated I can also finish my task
successfully.

On the next interaction, we have been given a task to build another daily lesson plans
using reading skills as the main focus. In my group, we have developed activities that
will be used throughout the teaching and learning process later. What is more
challenging is the task to record our teaching in the classroom with the use of materials
and the same lesson plan. Fortunately I have a very good group of friends. We
compliment each other. We communicate trough e-mail, Skype and phone to settle up
this micro-teaching. Lastly, after complete the microteaching, I find the big trouble to
burn my microteaching video in the CD. I don’t know how to change the FLV format to
MPEG format. With this big trouble I have learn one new thing. Now I can burn the
video to CD without any problem after my husband show the technique to convert the
FLV to MP3. This experience was much bit but the production is very sweet.

I hope I can use all of my knowledge for my student at my school. Thanks for everyone
have much helping me to finish my task and settle up my problems. A special thanks to
Ms Yeoh Phaik Kin, without you I’ve got nothing.