Planning
Planning is the fundamental step in education. Instructors’ teaching purposes will be clarified in lesson plans. The issue related to substitute teachers reveals the importance of planning. In the second week of my student teaching, my head teacher took a leave for the whole week. Different substitute teachers came to the classroom. And they did not have any lesson plan and seemed to know nothing about this course. From my observation, I will say, students did nothing on this class that week. What the substitute teachers did was to keep students in safe, honestly. The problem of substitute teachers might be a loophole in public school system. Planning performs an important role in every single step of education.
Reflection on ED 630 Lesson Plan: Audio-visual English (Forest Gump)
In this lesson, the instructor’s teaching purpose focuses on language as well as cultural background. When designing the above lesson plan, the instructor focused on the socio-cultural context development. To learn a language learners have to learn the culture background as well. Language reflects human’s mind set which is rooted in a certain culture.
Using a feature film in English as Foreign Language (EFL) classroom is an efficient way to create an authentic communication context. Firstly, films can present more natural language and more authentic context than pure lecture of a non-native speaking teacher can. Secondly, learners usually have strong interest about feature films. Therefore, it provides better incentive for language study. Thirdly, the visual and audio information from the film can provide more accurate connotation for words and phrases in atarget language.
I think the last point is also the most important one for language leaner according to my own experience. I had been living in China until recently. And I learned the English word “square” in the middle school. I remember clearly I learned it from the phrase, Tiananmen Square, which is about 440,000m2. (I lived my first 30 years totally in China) A couple of days ago, I went to visit Times Square for the first time in my life. When I stood right at the center of the “square” I did not realize it and kept looking for it. Although I’ve read about the Times Square and know it is much smaller than Tiananmen Square, the term “square” means a broad and widely open space in my mind. If I had learned this word from a visual material and learned more cultural background of it, I would not make such a mistake.
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