Reflection Paper about Speaking

Reflection Paper about Speaking   What did you learn?     I have learned a lot of Speaking Activities!   Thanks to this class, I am getting organizing my future lesson plan nowadays. Before I joined this class, I just thought I could shift my learning experience to learners deductively because not only me but also most of my generation have learned English deductively without any speaking activities like I’ve learned in this class. Because of that, most of them are not good at speaking English. It is undeniable that grammar knowledge itself doesn’t give speaking skill if learners don't have any opportunity for internalizing it. That’s why I’ve thought I should encourage them to speak English with Filipino teacher by using Skype on the Internet after teaching basic grammar. But the problem is that the learners need to look for a proper teacher and to pay money to the teacher about 200~300 pesos (6,000~9,000 won) per hour depending on the teacher's ability. That’s why I have been worried about how to make my lesson including all skills such as speaking, listening, writing and reading skill. Fortunately, I have a chance to learn about teaching English speaking skill. I'd like to appreciate you for helping and providing us with priceless files like a “links_for_activities”.  This precious information can make me find out other modern skills.   From now on, I try to make my future lesson plan in my imagination by using speaking skill that I have learned. If I became an English teacher, I could worm up my class by using brainstorming and mind mapping activities. It could easily attract students’ attention into the class topic. I could check their vocabulary ability and what words I should provide them with for my lesson. Then I could smoothly go into my lecture. And after that, I would show some things that are related to my lecture such as pictures, video clips, topics and titles of a text to guess what the lesson will be about. And then, I'll choose appropriate activities I've learned such as information gaps, picture-based activities, storytelling with pictures/cubes game, role-play/real-play, show-and-tell, presentations, situations/simulations and culture activity.   Even though I would start teaching deductively that day's topic patterns, I could give them a lot of chances to speak English with each other for using information gaps. I believe this activity is way useful to practice daily English patterns. So I’ll introduce Filipino friends and encourage them to keep in touch with Filipinos on the Skepe. And I’ll provide them with culture differences such as "toilet paper". Filipinos use their left hand with water instead of using toilet paper. This kind of culture shock makes students having a big curiosity compared to their own culture.  Nowadays, people live in a huge cyber world by adapting the culture of SNS(Social Network Service). So, if the learners make up their mind to use English for improving speaking/writing skill on the cyber world such as Facebook and Spype, I strongly encourage them to select culture as a topic that is based on the theory of information gap or culture chock.  In addition, show-and-tell and presentations of personal experience could become nice speaking activities as well. I think these activities provide them with an opportunity for internalization. If the learners pick up some precious things that kept good memories, they could easily generate their story about the things. It could be not stressful to make their presentation because it is their real story. Another good activity is picture-based activities. It also students could immediately make some daily English sentences because the picture gives them interested in the scene. It means visualization is more useful than sentences based on text.    In a nutshell, I’ll use priceless speaking activities for my lesson plan to attract students’ attention. For instance, I remember that I had difficulties for giving answers because I didn't have any ideas of some questions when I was in an English institute in Cebu for studying IELTS. If I had a question in speaking test, for example, "who is your favorite movie star in the world? why?", I could not give my real answer because I'm not interested in movie stars so I don't know their name especially Hollywood stars’ and even I could catch up some Korean movie star's name, it's useless because I don't know about him/her. So, in that case I had to make some possible answers and tried to memorize it all. It always drove me crazy at that time. Therefore, I believe that curiosity leads to intrinsic motivation, this motivation leads to learning and doing communication and communication leads to having confidence. That's why curiosity is the vital factor for beginners. That’s why one important role of a teacher is how to make curiosity about their lecture. If teachers couldn’t make any curiosity, they would not involve their students in their class even if the students have good speaking ability. So, I will always focus on how to make curiosity to my learners by using several speaking activities I've learned from you. Thanks a lot!