Drawing Activities

In the above example, the ETAs themselves resorted to drawings to convey meaning to students was described. Furthermore, on Halloween, after introducing the history of Halloween and a review of Halloween-related words and adjectives, based on the teaching advisor’s classroom observation report, the ETA in Table 19 even had students draw their own Halloween characters such as ghosts in order to familiarize students with the sentence pattern “For Halloween, I want to be ______________” by writing the nouns and adjectives they had previously learned to describe their works.

Table 19

Lesson Observation Feedback Report of Drawing Activities for Halloween Lessons Lesson Objectives:

1. Students will understand the history of Halloween

2. Students will learn and understand the words: ghost, costume, mask, and scary Activities Observed:

1. Halloween writing and drawing activities Reflection on Observation:

9:05 ETA introduced the history of Halloween and associated vocabulary using Power Point…

9:13 She had the children turn to Page 17 and review the adjectives that students can use to describe the Halloween character in their later drawing.

9:15 ETA showed a slide in which the middle had square containing “For

Halloween, I want to be a _________”…The students were given a worksheet on which they drew their ghost and wrote a sentence containing an adjective and a noun as a description underneath the drawing…

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(Lesson observation feedback report, October 31, 2013)

Similar accounts were also reported by the ETA in Excerpt 50. To help students review what they learned in Halloween lessons, the ETA asked fourth-graders to display their creativity by designing their own Halloween cookies and Halloween candy; the ETA asked the fifth-graders to create their own Jack-o'-lanterns. The students were then required to write sentences such as “He looks/feels/is _______” to describe their lanterns; they seemed to enjoy participating in this drawing activity.

Correspondingly, the example shown in Excerpt 51, in which students used their pictures coupled with creative sentences or vocabulary words such as “I go to school by cloud” or “I go to school by T-Rex” to depict how they go to school as they were learning different means of transportation. Drawing activities seemed to be a good strategy to invite especially kinesthetic-oriented students to learn English concurrently because students revealed their interests in the drawing process.

Excerpt 50

With the fourth grade classes…I tried to incorporate what they were learning in the classroom into the Halloween lesson. I showed them pictures of Halloween snacks and cookies, and asked them to draw their own “pumpkin cookies” or

“ghost cookies” or “Halloween Candy”. I also did a Halloween Lesson with the Fifth Graders… At the end of the main presentation…and asked them to create their own Jack-o'-lanterns. At the bottom of the page, I asked the students to write, “He feels/looks/is_______.” Many students wrote, “He feels bad” or “He is a naughty boy.”… they really enjoyed the activity. (ETA’s biweekly reflection report, October 31, 2011)

Excerpt 51

… So instead I made worksheets where the students had to draw while

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incorporating the sentence patterns or new vocabulary. For instance, we had the fifth graders draw a picture of how they go to school since we are learning modes of transportation. It was great practice, some of them got really creative drawing things like “I go to school by cloud” or “I go to school by T-Rex”…

The students really got into the activity and it was great to see their work.

(ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, March 25, 2016)

4.4.1.4 Promoting Learning of Kinesthetic-Oriented Learners

Aside from attending to visual and auditory learners, the comments made by the LETs and the ETA in Excerpts 52, 53, 54, 55, and 56 where the ETAs also devise non-traditional lessons to incorporate hands-on activities into co-teaching classrooms, such as dying eggs, making gingerbread men, making fruit salad, baking cookies, making peanut butter, and making jelly sandwiches. All seemed to point to the

purpose of ensuring students’ acquisition of experiential learning (Kolb, 2015). These activities reflected the accommodation of kinesthetic-oriented learners in terms of learning English in a more practical way. Through these activities, the LETs realized that the importance of experiential learning can no longer be ignored.

Excerpt 52

“本年度 ETA 有帶入實作薑餅人、彩繪彩蛋、及萬聖節咬甜甜圈活動的慶 祝活動。”

(“ETAs designed some hands-on and practical activities, such as dying eggs, making gingerbread man, biting doughnuts, for students to celebrate special holidays in class.”) (LET’s feedback report, 2015)

Excerpt 53

我請 ETA 事先烤好薑餅小圓臉的餅乾，我們講完薑餅人的故事後，ETA 讓 小朋友們用糖果裝飾薑餅人的表情，讓我體會到做中學的重要性。

(“The ETA baked gingerbread cookies while students were listening to the

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stories of gingerbread men. After that, students would use candies to decorate faces of gingerbread men. The LET then realized the importance of learning from doing.”) (LET’s feedback report, 2017)

Excerpt 54

“We did some living English lessons in other classes as well. We celebrated Mother’s Day in 5^th Grade & made fruit salad in 4^th grade (they’re learning about fruit! Apples, bananas, grapes, etc.”) (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, May 14, 2015)

The ETA in Excerpt 54 implemented a living lesson where the students made fruit salad to celebrate Mother’s Day, which not only gave the students practical experience but also created a genuine context to assist in their learning of the target fruit

vocabulary. A consistent picture could be seen in the ETA’s report in Excerpt 55. The students seemed to be especially enthusiastic about baking cookies, a kinesthetic activity that the ETA developed for them.

Excerpt 55

I was very happy when she helped me to get our cookie baking activity started in December. She took time out of her schedule to procure small toaster oven and getting ingredients… I think that was one of the most successful lessons we’ve had, in terms of student enthusiasm and learning. (ETA’s feedback report, 2013)

Excerpt 56

We made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with our 4^th graders to wrap up the food unit. The kids really enjoyed the activity, and it was fun to do a more non-traditional lesson. (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, November 29, 2013)

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In Excerpt 57, similarly, cultural aspects were integrated into an international food-sharing activity to give the fifth-graders an unforgettable hands-on experience where they brought the food they would like to share to the classroom and exchanged the stories behind the food with their classmates.

Excerpt 57

I designed many hands-on activities and lesson plans for my students. For instance, I taught 5^th grade about international cuisine and had a food-sharing activity in class where each student brought in international food items and shared with their classmates. (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, December 13, 2013)

Besides hands-on activities, another way of facilitating learning for kinesthetic-oriented students was shown in Excerpts 58 and 59. For instance, an interdisciplinary approach was employed in which an ETA taught the names of sports in English while the students were playing the sport. The kinesthetic learners greatly benefited from this learning experience. The ETA in Excerpt 59 combined the vowel song with movements to teach phonics. The movements reinforced the vowels that the first- and second-graders had been learning; the reinforcing effect seemed to exhibit in the students’ unexpected calling out of the letters, which also surprised the ETA. The common identification was that such movement seemed to help students to memorize the English words more easily.

Excerpt 58

For the three older grades… I plan to teach the names of sports, and then study a few sports in more depth. I also plan to cooperate with the gym teachers to play sports in gym class while also teaching English words. (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, September 14, 2012)

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Excerpt 59

They have so much unbridled energy, they are like little firecrackers. I taught them the English version of the Muzzy vowel song…To reinforce the shape of each of the vowels to the students I added miming and movement to the song.

The most wonderful moment came after class… As I passed two of my second and first grade students walking with their parents and I made an “O” and then an “A” shape with my arms, both children called out the letters. (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, September 14, 2012)

4.4.1.5 Incorporation of Diverse Activities

In addition to attend students with different learning styles respectively, ETAs were also able to take care of all different types of learners at the same time. For example, students in Excerpt 60 listened to a short Halloween song, watched a video, discussed what they had seen, and went trick-or-treating to celebrate Halloween. All these activities were incorporated together to simultaneously meet the needs of different learning styles of learners, which has been congruent with the proposal of Brown (2007), who has pointed out that students need to be provided a learning environment with sensory input that stimulates their all five senses. In other words, diverse activities can cater to students with visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning styles (Shin & Crandall, 2014); therefore they are allowed to learn in different ways but still learn successfully. Sensory or various audiovisual aids such as music, pictures, the taste of foods, or the smell of flowers (Brown, 2007) can be utilized to support the students’ learning process.

Excerpt 60

“Feedback from the advisor: I’m sure Halloween activities make English learning fun and meaningful for your students especially when videos, songs,

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and trick-or-treating activities were incorporated.” (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, November 7, 2011)

In a similar fashion, before Halloween, the ETAs in Excerpt 61 decorated the school with students by employing such props as cobwebs, pumpkins, and spiders, and helped students make costumes. During Halloween week, the ETA played songs, told spooky stories, and played movie clips to better acquaint visual-oriented,

auditory-oriented, and kinesthetic-oriented students with what Halloween looks like.

These activities were all employed to give students a better understanding of what most people actually do on Halloween celebration. In this way, all different types of students appeared to be engaged in the English learning process.

Excerpt 61

…The best is when I teach the holiday. I really wanted the kids to celebrate Halloween this year…We decorated the entire school with cobwebs, spiders, ghost cut outs and pumpkins and helped every student make a costume. During Halloween week I introduced the students to Halloween songs, clips from Halloween movies, and even told a few spooky stories. When Halloween finally arrived, the school was abuzz. Students couldn’t wait until the passing periods to…run outside where administrators were waiting to give them candy. All in all, it was a success and I was very happy… (ETA’s biweekly reflection feedback report, January 3, 2014)

A similar learning experience reported by the LET that the ETAs created for the students was reported in Excerpt 62, where students experienced cultural lessons on holidays such as Halloween, Christmas, and Thanksgiving by drawing and describing pumpkin faces, sharing foods during a potluck to express gratitude, performing carols, performing dance and so on. The cultural lessons seemed to create an authentic

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learning context where multiple activities were integrated together to satisfy the needs of different types of learners and give them a more complete picture of how different festivals are celebrated.

Excerpt 62

On Halloween, she led the students to draw and describe their own pumpkin faces. For thanksgiving, she organized a thankful potluck for every class we teach, in which every kid and their homeroom teacher brought in sorts of food their want to share in class and learned to say what they are thankful for before sharing the food. On Christmas, she organized an English day for kids and staff to celebrate. She trained a group of students to sing and perform English carols.

She even led a group of students perform the dance “Little Drummer Boy” and brought to the school a lot of fun and joy. (LET’s feedback report, 2016)

4.4.2 Potential Benefits of Acknowledging Different Learner Styles

In Tables 12, 13, and 14, students’ responses such as dancing in their chairs and singing along with the songs in ETA-led co-teaching classrooms seemed to provide good evidence for their participation in the class and suggest that the incorporation of audio-visual materials into classroom instruction, including CD audio and YouTube videos, were a wise pedagogical operation to successfully pique student interests in learning English, because it appeared that the students were actively engaged and enjoyed singing the songs. This finding has been in line with Richards Mayer’s Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (2009), which illustrates that compared with printed textbooks, different types of audio-visual devices provide students with different information processing modalities to perceive incoming materials which are better instructional tools to effectively support the language learning process and create a diverse sensory experience for students. This point is further echoed by Gilakjani (2012), who shows that teaching materials presented in the form of audio

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and video multimedia are more entertaining and better stimulate students’ learning motivation.

In addition to adopting multimedia instructional materials, the ETA mentioned in Excerpt 50 and 51 utilized drawing activities as another strategy to draw students’

attention to the English learning content. That is, drawing activities served as descriptive tools for students to express their creative works in English, and student interest seemed to be fostered during the drawing process.

Aside from attending to auditory learners, kinesthetic-oriented students also benefited from ETAs’ English teaching. The students in Excerpts 52 to 56 attended non-traditional lessons where they embraced practical experience. For instance, hands-on activities such as dying eggs, making gingerbread men, making fruit salad, and baking cookies were practiced in ETA-led co-teaching classrooms. Such

endeavors were made by ETAs to facilitate experiential learning for students, and the students seemed to be especially enthusiastic about participating in these hands-on activities. The potential of this type of experiential learning beneficial to students has been extensively documented in Kolb (2015).

4.5 Pronunciation Feedback

4.5.1 Emphasis on Teaching Accurate Pronunciation

Another feature common to ETAs’ classroom activities that has been

consistently reported to greatly benefit students in annual reports is the immediate feedback to students’ incorrect pronunciation. While pronunciation as a

long-neglected area in English language teaching is an acknowledged fact (Harmer, 2001), its significance in English learning has never been denied. In fact, English pronunciation is deemed rather crucial in the language learning context. A number of researchers have underlined the importance of pronunciation instruction. Harmer (2001) has claimed that “pronunciation teaching not only makes students aware of

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different sounds and sound features (and what these mean), but can also improve their speaking immeasurably” and consequently “help them achieve the goal of improved comprehension and intelligibility” (p.183). In the same vein, concerning the place of pronunciation in communication situations, Morley (1991) has maintained that pronunciation is a prerequisite skill to achieve successful oral communication in the target language, which is considered the basis for the development of speaking skill.

Kelly (2000) has thus believed that “pronunciation work can, and should, be planned”

(p.13). Thus without the ability to pronounce sounds accurately, meaningful communication is simply not possible.

Different stakeholders of the ETA program were found to have recognized this feature of ETAs’ classroom activities. Different examples were thus identified from ETA reports, LET reports, and teaching advisors’ observation reports from various regions over time to describe how ETAs strongly emphasized the importance of teaching accurate pronunciation to students in this program.

The following excerpts and tables first showed that ETAs demonstrated a standard model of English pronunciation, simultaneously correcting students’

mispronounced words and sounds to help them have better pronunciation. In the teaching and learning process, ETAs then provided students with interactional feedback on pronunciation to compare and contrast between correct and inaccurate pronunciation. In addition to offering useful feedback, ETAs also required students to follow their demonstration and consistently practiced accurate pronunciation.

However, mere constant practice was insufficient; therefore, how ETAs made good use of certain strategies to help students improve the way they pronounced English sounds and words and incorporated pronunciation instruction to classroom activities to facilitate pronunciation learning were also presented. The following paragraphs were all examples of ETAs assisting students in acquiring accurate English

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pronunciation.

4.5.1.1 Demonstration of Standard English and Correction of Inaccurate Pronunciation

In Excerpts 63 to 68, it was found that ETAs utilized their strengths to provide students with a standard model of English pronunciation to follow and corrected the students’ incorrect pronunciation (Rao, 2010), because ETAs themselves reported that they were able to give the students a clear demonstration of how English sounds are produced, which seemed to be what the LETs cannot provide.

Excerpt 63

“I have helped my students, as well as my co-teachers, improve their pronunciation.” (ETA’s feedback report, 2011)

Excerpt 64

“ETA the native speaker can provide the most standard pronunciation and correct students’ pronunciation.” (ETA’s feedback report, 2014)

Correspondingly, LETs acknowledged the ETAs’ efforts to expose students to standard English pronunciation and improve their pronunciation, since the students had few opportunities to converse with foreigners or foreign teachers with standard English pronunciation.

Excerpt 65

“ETA brings lots of cultural knowledge into the classroom and helps the students by giving them a standard model of English pronunciation while I use my years of experience to effectively teach and keep the class engaged.” (LET’s feedback report, 2014)

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Excerpt 66

It is a good program. I think this program especially aids in improving students’

pronunciation. The students do not get exposed to many foreigners or people with standard English pronunciation, and having an ETA in the classroom to demonstrate (and clarify) how English sounds are made is very important.

(LET’s feedback report, 2011)

Excerpt 67

“在發音單元，外師可以更精確的示範發音方式，讓學生學到正確發音。”

(“ETA could demonstrate how to pronounce words correctly to students, and they could acquire accurate pronunciation.”) (LET’s feedback report, 2013)

Excerpt 68

“Students could acquire more accurate pronunciation from ETA.” (LET’s feedback report, 2013)

Excerpts 69 and 70 in teaching advisors’ classroom observation feedback reports also revealed a similar view that while completing the classroom activities, the ETAs clearly demonstrated and introduced to the students the importance of

pronouncing English sounds accurately and assisted the students in improving their pronunciation, which seemed to help students to approximate native-like

pronunciation.

Excerpt 69

ETA and LET shared responsibilities in class-When the LET dominated the activity, the ETA would repeat words and act out to assist the LET. While ETA dominated the class and especially work on the pronunciation and demonstrate the sentence patterns, the LET helped on classroom management. (Lesson observation feedback report, October 12, 2012)

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Excerpt 70

“ETA shared the responsibilities of leading activities, demonstrating

pronunciation and correcting students’ pronunciation.” (Lesson observation feedback report, October 31, 2014)

pronunciation and correcting students’ pronunciation.” (Lesson observation feedback report, October 31, 2014)

在文檔中 外籍英語教師的課堂活動特色分析研究 (頁 96-0)