Vera's Green Garden

Vera's Reaction Paper ^0^

2005-08-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

A -- Improvisational Games
(1 ) Student level:5-6 graders graders
(2) Reflection:

As a teacher in elementary school, I am impressed by the improvisational games very much. Even we, adults, got excited with the games as well. Not to mention kids! Improvisational Activities like alphabetic scene, memorizing games, and charades are very fun, creative, and heuristic. When teaching young learners, the proportion of fun elements must be higher enough to attract them to get involved. That is why I think it is a great idea to incorporate ILS game in my teaching. The strengths of ILS games lie in promoting facility, fluency, and spontaneity of the language (Phillips, 1999). Language is a tool to communicate in our daily life. Although we, no matter low or high level learners have learned vocabulary, syntax ability, we still have some spontaneous problems. That is to say, our language knowledge is passive, not active. ILS games provide us with great practice which constructs a meaningful context where participants have to figure out words to make sense. Thus, learners can make use of their language in a natural way and activate their language. In addition, ILS games, like brainstorming activities, full of challenges motivate high achievers a lot. Just as Stephen Krashen argued the 'i+1' theory, learners need to challenges to proceed.

According to my students' age, level, background, and interest, I would like to adapt ILS in the following steps. First, give a vocabulary instruction and the numbers of new words should no more than ten for the great gap among students' ability. Teachers have to make sure that learners acquire the ability to recognize, read and speak words. It would be great to review previous vocabulary at the same time. Then, the teacher demonstrates how to play the game step by step with clear explanation, and set up rules for classroom management in advance (elementary students are often out of control if given no regulation). Next, set the classes in heterogeneous groups first. Let high achievers guide low achievers first and encourages their interaction. In course of playing, the teacher supervises each groups and doing classroom management. After that, teachers assign students in pairs in which students with similar abilities get together. In this way, opportunities and challenges of practice will be elevated. Finally, to wrap up the activities, teachers encourages each group to play the game in public and give some grammatical corrections according to teachers' observation.

B-- Tongue Twisters
(1) Student level:3-6 graders graders
(2) Reflection:

As far as beginning language development are concerned, articulation and pronunciation is quite critical. Tongue twister is one of the alternatives to promote articulation, accuracy and fluency of oral ability with fun and effectiveness. In the pronunciation learning process of EFL context, it is necessary for learners to develop phonics ability and raise phonological awareness at the very beginning.“Phonemic awareness is awareness of sounds in spoken word; phonics is the relation between letters and sounds in written words” (Stahl, 1992) For example, in the tongue twister Peter Piper, students can get the awareness of the phoneme [p] and concept of onset for [p] occur in the initial syllables. With phonological awareness, it would facilitate their spelling ability and literacy as well. On the other side, the entertainment of tongue twister stimulates learners' interests greatly. Take my own teaching experience for example, I've ever taught tongue twister and it really impress students and brought lots of fun.

Making use of tongue twister in elementary level should take the following aspects into considerations. First, construct an easy atmosphere. Some students feel afraid of making mistakes in public. Second, teachers demonstrate reading the tongue twister from low speed to high speed. To encourage students, it would be great to start reading at the low speed. Students will get sense of confidence when they improve. Besides, systematic and long-term learning is much more effective. Teachers can adopt it as classroom management or class routine. For instance, to use it as a way to ask students to keep quite, i.e. whenever students are too noisy, they begin to read tongue twister together and the last one to be quiet have to read tongue twister in public. Last but not the least, teachers observe what sounds are difficult to students, then do more activities with those sounds.

C-- Story For Discussion
(1) Student level:3-6 graders
(2) Reflection:

Story discussion is a very common way to teach in elementary schools. Through stories, children grow the abilities of perceptiveness, imagination, creativity, concept of structure, ethical values, culture learning, critical thinking and language including oral, reading, listening, and speaking simultaneously. All in all, stories benefit students in a variety ways and full of educational values.

In adopting story discussion to teach elementary school students, I will employ it as follows: In the first place, choose appropriate materials. Interesting stories cooperating with educational values and big beautiful pictures are favorable. Secondly, teachers read the stories full of variety of facial expression and body language. If possible, using puppets to read stories will attract students more. Third, it is very important to familiarize students with the vocabulary in advance. Fourth, in order to increase the participation of learners, teachers arrange students into groups. Give them questions before they answer and ask them to discuss in a group later. After that, teachers can ask every group to answer one by one. Moreover, teachers may ask students to do role play after telling the story. Meanwile, teachers may encourage students to change the content and use more creativity. Last, teachers may play music while storytelling or discussion. Choose the music matching to the story content may help students imagine the story context and increase the sense of novelty.

Finally, welcome to my blog:Vera's Green Garden-- http://verahan99.blogspot.com/
Feel free to leave any comments or insights!!!

Reference:
1.Phillips, Brian David. Improvisational Language Structures: Improving Conversational Spontaneity through ILS Theatre Games in Proceedings of the sixteenth Conference on English Teaching and Learning the Republic of China. Taipei: Crane Publishing, 1999(p.551-565)
2.Stahl, S. A.(1992). Saying the “p” word: Nice guidelines for exemplary phonics instruction. The Reading Teacher, 45(8), 618-625.
3.Beaty, Janice J., College, Elmira（1994）. Picture Book Storytelling Literature Activities for Young Children. Harcourt Brace College Publishers: Florida.

Final assignment --story for discussion: Growing Roots

2005-08-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Growing Roots
Phillip Gully

- Students’ level: High school students
- Source: Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul: 101 Stories (Chicken Soup for the Soul)

Our strength grows out of weakness
Ralph Wadlo Emerson

When I was growing up, I had an old neighbor named Dr. Gibbs. He didn’t look like any doctor I’d ever known. Every time I saw him, he wore denim overalls and a straw hat, the front brim of which was green sunglass plastic. He smiled a lot, a smile that matched his hat—old and crinkly and well worn. He never yelled at us for playing in his yard. I remember him as someone who was a lot nicer than circumstances warranted.

When Dr. Gibbs wasn’t saving lives, he was planting trees. His house sat on ten acres, and his life goal was to make it a forest.

The good doctor had some interesting theories concerning plant husbandry. He came from the “no pain, no gain” school of horticulture. He never watered his new trees, which flew in the face of conventional wisdom. Once I asked why. He said that watering plants spoiled them, and that if you water them, each successive tree generation will grow weaker and weaker. So you have to make things rough for them and weed out the weenie trees early on.

He talked about how watering trees made for shallow roots, and how trees that weren’t watered had to grow deep roots in search of moisture. I took him to mean that deep roots were to be treasured.

So he never watered his trees. He’d plant an oak and, instead of watering it every morning, he’d beat it with a rolled-up newspaper. Smack! Slap! Pow! I asked him why he did that, and he said it was to get the tree’s attention.

Dr. Gibbs went to glory a couple of years after I left at the trees that I’d watched him plant some twenty-five years ago. They’re granite strong now. Big and robust. Those trees wake up in the morning and beat their chests and drink their coffee black.

I planted a couple of trees a few years back. Carried water to them for a solid summer. Sprayed them. Prayed over them. The whole nine yards. Two years of coddling has resulted in trees that expect to be waited on hand and foot. Whenever a cold wind blows in, they tremble and chatter their branches. Sissy trees.
Funny thing about those trees of Dr. Gibbs’s. Adversity and deprivation seemed to benefit them in ways comfort and ease never could.

Every night before I go to bed, I check on my two sons. I stand over them and watch their little bodies, the rising and falling of life within. I often pray for them. Mostly I pray that their lives will be easy. “Lord, spare them from hardship.” But lately I’ve been thinking that it’s time to change my prayer.

This change has to do with the inevitability of cold winds that hit us at the core. I know my children of cold winds that hit us at the core. I know my children are going to encounter hardship, and my praying they won’t is naïve. There’s always a cold wind blowing somewhere.

So I’m changing my eventide prayer. Because life is tough, whether we want it to be or not. Instead, I’m going to pray that my son’s roots grow deep, so they can draw strength from the hidden sources of the eternal God.

Too many times we pray for ease, but that’s a prayer seldom met. What we need to do is pray for roots that reach deep into the Eternal, so when the rains fall and the winds blow, we won’t be swept asunder.

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Questions for listening and discussions:
Growing Roots

1. The narrator lives near Dr. Gibbs.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

2. Dr. Gibbs wanted to build a forest but failed at last.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

3. Dr. Gibbs didn’t water his trees at all.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

4. The trees planted by Dr. Gibbs grew deep roots for seeking moisture and sunshine.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

5. The narrator thinks Dr. Gibbs a cruel man.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

6. The narrator is female.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

7. The narrator knows life is tough and thus prays for ease for his children.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

8. The narrator has two babies.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

9. Dr. Gibbs’s philosophy for trees leads plants to grow strongly.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

10. The narrator is divorced.
TRUE FALSE DON'T KNOW WHY:

Guided Imagery
Growing Roots

Let’s begin the Guided Imagery. Close your eyes. Gently take a good deep breath and try to let oxygen mildly fill up your lungs and whole body. Concentrate on your breath. Make the breath in and out in a natural way and concordance. Every breath brings you more relaxation and satisfaction.

Please imagine a green wide meadow. Verdant trees, lovely flowers, and vivacious birds weave a pleasant picture. You are strolling on it. The fresh air revives you greatly. You stretch your body and feel wonderful and energetic. You see dews sliding down tender leaves and butterflies dancing in the wind. You begin to play with the beautiful butterflies. After the playing, you take a rest beneath a tree, an oak tree, where is pretty cool and quiet. Gently, you sit down and the breeze tenderly touches your face and passing through your hair. You smile and close your eyes, just enjoying the moment which belongs to you and the meadow. (3 minutes)

Now, slowly open your eyes at five, feeling comfortable and refreshed. One…two…three…four…five. Open your eyes, you get full sense of content.

My tongue twister!! ^0^

2005-08-08T03:31:00.000-07:00

1.Thomas thinks Cynthia as a thief but thanks her throwing three thousand for the theater.

2.Shawn Schwarzenegger sells six sick sheep on the sheet and shows Sherry how sick his six sheep is on the sheet.

3.Bright Brat Brown had bread and black beer for breakfast back in his barn in the breeze.

Intelligent way to acquire English--ID

2005-08-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

After experiencing ID twice, I profoundly fell in love with interactive drama. Never do I know learning English could be so absorbing and exciting.

The reason I like it so much lies in the complex and tense plots as well as a variety of perspectives and personalities comprising the story's depth and width. Every actor just use their own way to express the role without much restriction. Though the majority of the stories reflects ugly sides of life which seem distressing and uncomfortable, those incidents do exist in our real life. Yes, drama resembles our life. As we can see those society news, they just abound with similar stories. Therefore, rather than rejecting them instantly, it may be worthy nurturing the healthy and open-minded attitude to figure out how to interface the darkness and exploring the bright and active meaning of our life simultaneously. Learning can be achieved by roleplaying.

Except the charisma of drama, I found ample educational value of interactive drama including the improvisational dialogues which stimulate our quick thinking and unconsciousness in the language, authentic communicative situations that create natural and meaningful conversation, and the engagement of participants which motivate learners implicitly and explicitly. Interactive drama not only interacts interpersonally but aslo proceeds intrapersonally.

In addition to the above reasons, I enjoy the process that makes me "think". During the second interactive drama, I played the role of the police officer who had to strike out ideas to capture the suspect. So I planed what to ask and recorded everyone's interview just like what a real cob does. After that, I compared the records to find further clues. Anyway, I was so eager to find out the murderer though I failed at last. (Actually, I didn't interview Peter at all because I directly went to people with higher possibilities acording to the limited time which was a major wrong judgment) During the process, I conceived of reasonable ways to deal with the touchy story which I used to think rarely. In spite of the failure, I came to realize there is some unnoticed space in my thinking calling for thorough and considerate observances. It's quite amazing that ID teaches me how to think completely.

As regards the application of ID, it is not an easy job to put it into practice in elementary school since young learners' command of English may not be good enough to play the roles. However, I hope doing the following things will promote the effects of ID in elementary schools. First of all, regarding to the origins of the stories, it would be better to collect stories from fairy tales or fables with short and simple plots as well as positive value of life. Next, teachers may assign students into heterogeneous groups in which teachers assign roles according to learners' language abilities and personality. Then teachers step by step instruct students with a clear direction because young learners always behave unimaginably such as emotional problems, shyness, etc. What's more, it is better to prepare the costumes, music, and props which may prompt kids into the stories more easily. Last but not the least, teachers should always keep encouraging students and provide them with instant support to help them involve in the game.

Persuasion of Commercials

2005-07-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/photomailtour

This yahoo photomail ad provides us with a vivid example which is made by the motivated sequence and the combination of behaviorism and psychoanalysis to persuade the audience to use the service.

Starting from a story, it narrates a daughter who likes to share her life with her mom via emailing photos. It is mainly separated into four parts: the introduction, sending photos, receiving photos, and get started.

At the beginning, the ad makes the audience to identify the main character very much by showing the woman's life which is just like everyone of us, and therefore the audience tend to believe what happens to her may happen to us as well. It informed the audience that the old e-mail way exist bunch of annoying troubles to send photos. However, it is not impossible to avoid the troubles. It could be very easy to overcome all those problems by applying the new yahoo email service. This may not only attract our attention for the reason she is one of us but also convince the audience that her need is our need and we all suffer from those painful experiences. The ad combined the attention, need, and satisfaction step naturally by the form of a story. Furthermore, it also involves Maslow’s social need that by the usage of service, we may improve our connection with others.

After introduction for the service, the ad illustrated practical instances, from the standpoints of the user and the receiver, to show how convenient, interesting and easy if adopting the service. It is the visualization step which strengthens the audience’s mind that it do help us in a very effective way. In the phase, the ad promotes the audience's behavior by the principles of conditioning from Behavorism. It stimulates and attracts the audience's heart very much.

In the last stage, get started, it explicitly showed the information of how to implement the service. Just to install the service step by step. Then the audience can change their life in a better way. It conforms to the action step that offers the customers ways to change.

Our lives are full of miscellaneous ads. It seemed impossible we reject all of them. Nevertheless, I feel lucky that I have the knowledge to realize and to analyze the rationale of them for the more we understand about the way how the ad persuades us, the more meaningful, wise and practical purchasing or decisions we will make.

Guided Imagery Assignment-2

2005-07-23T22:39:00.000-07:00

The soaring bird

Now let’s do the Guided Imagery. Close your eyes. Gently take a good deep breath and try to let oxygen mildly fill up your lungs and whole body. Concentrate on the respiration. Make the breath in and out in a natural way and concordance. Every breath brings you great relaxation and satisfaction.

Keep your eyes closed and loose your entire body. Feel the relaxation that flow from your feet (pause three seconds for each part of body), through legs, belly, chest, shoulder, face, to your brain. Feel your brain clean and blank. Let your entire body reach a relaxed, loose, and peaceful condition.

Now imagine for a moment that you are a bird with strong feathers and sharp eyes. You can clearly see a distant place and are very good at flying. Standing on a top of the high green mountain, you see distant places. Everything beneath seems very small and peaceful. Then, you decide to open your feathers to fly in the sky. As the breeze blew through your feathers, it makes you comfortable and relaxed. Perceiving the air flow makes you enjoy the flying very much. Passing through the white and blue clean clouds, the smell of fresh air energizes your body very much. Seeing through the clouds, you find out the blue ocean below is so vast, deep and clear that you get clam, cool and tranquil in your mind. You have three more minutes to soar in the sky and go wherever you want to get extremely free and contended.

Now it is time to bring yourself back to full awareness. In a moment, I will count to five. At the number five, your eyes open, you are fully awake an aware and feeling great. One, two, three, four, and five. Eyes open, feeling superbly revived.

Guided Imagery Assignment-1

2005-07-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

The Starry Night

Now let’s begin the Guided Imagery. Close your eyes. Gently take a good deep breath and try to let oxygen mildly fill up your lungs and whole body. Concentrate on your breath. Make the breath in and out in a natural way and concordance. Every breath brings you more relaxation and satisfaction.

Keep your eyes closed and loose your entire body. Feel the relaxation flow from your feet (pause three seconds for each part of body), through your legs, your belly, your chest, your shoulder, your face, to your brain. You feel that your brain is clean and blank. Let your entire body reach a relaxed, loose, and peaceful condition.

Now please imagine a starry night. You are walking along a pier to a beautiful lake with a good friend, whom you trust and enjoy talking to. It is pretty quiet and tranquil. The sky is dotted with great number of shining and shimmering stars. The lake is calm and reflects the moon light. Layers of ripples made by the mild night wind appear on the surface of the lake. The scenery is just as graceful as a classic painting. After a while, you see a boat by the pier. Your friend and you want to lie on the boat relaxing. Then you gently lie down together and watch the starry night. A gentle breeze touches your face and the smell of the lake let your mind relieved. You two begin to enjoy the placid moment talking to each other for a while. (pause three minutes)

After the relaxation, you want to return home. Walking on the path and then you say farewell to each other. Now please join me at the count of five. Slowly open your eyes at five, feeling comfortable and refreshed. One…two…three…four…five. Open your eyes, you get full sense of content.

Vera's Feedback on ILS

2005-07-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

Vera's View on Improvisational Language Structure

As an elementary school English teacher, my philosophy of teaching English is to motivate my students' interest and to foster them the basic knowledge and skills in English learning. I believe that“English teaching should consist of fun and energy for kids." Take myself for example. I started my English learning at a commercial language institution at the age of nine. At the beginning, it was a brand new experience and I was attracted by the new sounds, characters, foreign teachers and textbooks with vivid pictures. Everything was novel for me. Somehow, I was assigned to an inappropriate class where many kids have higher English ability or already have years learning experiences. So, English became a very dark and painful experience in my childhood. Because I got great anxiety for English, I even skipped the classes many times. Consequently, my tragic childhood memory always reminds me not to give too much pressure to students, especially for those younger learners. If they are not willing to learn at all, how can you expect them to speak anything? How can they treat a nightmare like candies when they feel frightened in their deep heart?

Improvisational language structure (ILS) gives one of the best contexts to lower students' pressure and helps them to reduce their language ego. In addition, it promotes students not to perceive their self-consciousness and to engage greatly in the language. That was really cool. For many language learners, no matter what age it is, it is challenging and quite difficult to speak in public. They get embarrassed and feel devalued about themselves if making mistakes in front of their classmates. However, while learners engage in a game which owns similar relaxing effect given by ILS activities, they focus themselves on the game and pay less attention on the mistakes or accuracy. In this way, they may produce more fluent English or at least do their best to express their messages to contribute themselves to achieve the mission. Meanwhile, they neglect the part of the forms or the structures of English. They just learn how to communicate meaningfully and functionally. However, it was sometimes argued that if we put too much emphasis on language fluency then students may have fossilization problems. It is worthwhile to take care of the problem but not take in a pessimistic way. Fortunately, there are still some ways to improve it. For example, we teachers may correct students' errors in private or correct them in a whole class after the game finishes. It is we teachers' responsibility to monitor them and inform them after the activity.

On the other hand, I found out ILS not only help develop language fluency but also nurture the valuable intelligence—creativity. Creativity has been absolutely one of the high competitiveness indexes nowadays. I especially enjoyed the show, whose line is it anyway, when the participants had to squeeze different answers in a limited time. "The prop”is my favorite. It was surprising that we humans may make use of the plain thing in miscellaneous ways. Those funny and innovative answers came to imply we have the power to change things used to seem impossible.

ILS is consistent with my teaching belief. I look forward to merge the idea into my teaching to strengthen students' motivation in English. Owing to the age of my students, I intend to adjust some of the improvisational games to become easier and friendly. I can't wait to see their elated face and hurray!^___^

P.S. The photo was taken by me in Palau!!