Practicum Reflections
Observation reflection
During my practicum, I had an opportunity of meeting a mid-level English teacher who gave me an insight on strategies that she applies to increase English learning proficiency among learners. One of the strategies that she frequently uses was employment of gestures and visuals to reinforce the spoken and written words. Gestures are signs that we make using our faces, hands and other parts of the body. Some words are best understood when you accompany them with physical actions hence increased perception.
The other method that she applies to emphasis understanding is that she is enthusiastic and encouraged active participation of all learners thus making the whole English lesson enjoyable. Even when she was introducing vocabularies and other terms she would make them appear so simple and easy to pronounce that learners were eager to lean more. These learners were not amazed by the big and strange terms but rather they kept on pronouncing them loudly even after a teacher had left the class (ScifferDanoff, 2006).
At some point I got a chance to ask the same teacher about the various strategies that she uses other than what I had already observed. She emphasized on speech adjustment such that when a teacher speaks slowly, repeats words or phrases and uses shorter sentences, the learners will be able to understand quite well. The attention of learners is also well obtained by exaggeration of intonations in various sentences and words so that the differences are noted.
After reading a text or passage, she insisted that it is important that a teacher clarifies the meaning of words and other styles of speech that could be included.
2. Tutoring reflection
One-on-one tutoring is quite different from teaching a whole class at the same time. Some learners who enjoy participating in class may have problems in personal lessons while the confidence of some of the learners is enhanced by the one-on-one coaching (ScifferDanoff, 2006).
There is one particular learner who I noted never participated in class quiz sessions but during personal lessons and coaching he was very active. Later on in one-on-one sessions I realized that this learner had problems with comprehending English language words at a faster rate. Thus, it becomes more appropriate for a teacher to allocate more time for the development part of a lesson. Ample time should also be allocated for introduction so that a teacher can try to revise the previous lesson and then proceed from there (ScifferDanoff, 2006).
The ability of a teacher to use a variety of strategies and ideas proved to be quite significant in teaching English language. Most learners could always remember the action that was associated with a certain word and from that point they could easily recall the exact word. Hence developing various approaches to teaching English proved to be extremely significant in helping learners remember various items.
The other tutoring experience I obtained from the practicum is that improving fluency of the learners is largely dependent on the amount of individual time spent on each learner. Most learners have confidence and speech problems and a teacher is only able to identify the problem after spending more time with the affected learner.
Reference
ScifferDanoff, V. (2006), Easy ways to reach and teach English language learners: strategies at a glance. Retrieved from: www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=233.
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