Better late than 'pregnant'

As promised, I will deliver this tale of the spin-off version of the better known 'better late than never' adage which was related to us by our Assessment in Literature lecturer. You see, the good English teacher had set up the activity of asking students to fill in the blanks in the phrasal verbs. And the story goes that there was this one question i.e. "better late than _____" and this one smart alec in the class raised up his hand and said " Pregnant, the answer is pregnant teacher." Well, the student was certainly paying a lot of attention in his science classes and who could deny that his answer is technically correct, right? So, before we go on into the debate and brouhaha of bringing sex education into the classroom, the more pertinent question that our lecturer raised was how can we assess the answers from the students which are ahem, technically correct but not expected in the syllabus spectrum? Hmm, we can't blame the students for being too smart too, can we? One thing's for sure though, Angelina Jolie's belly will certainly get bigger than Jack Black with her twin babies there...

Something's COOKing here...

Hail to the newly crowned American Idol David Cook! Call him scruffy or Daughtry-wannabe if you like, but his raspy voice is just so so sexy and who can forget his redition of Mariah Carey's Always Be My Baby ? Besides, him singing with his tear-stained eyes on the results night just spelled sincerity, honesty...oh...completely tucked at my heart string. Ok, ok, here I go again with with my new-found pet artiste but with my taste leaning more towards the rockers' edge, it's no surprise that I put my bets on Cook (opps, I'm here in Malaysia here, cannot vote) than say his contender, the wide-eyed David Archuleta.



This younger David was the favourite to take the crown and I know there are many young girls who are swooning over him. I do not want to sound old here ( which I am certainly not because I believe that we will always be young at heart) but his style or approach just do not appeal to me. A crooner of ballads who has the habit of keeping his eyes shut to the world during 70 % of his singing, I mean come on, we don't need another Barry Mannilow here! But then again teenage girls around the world are peeling Nick Carter's posters off their walls to make way for Archuleta's because he is just so irresistibly cute to them, just as Cook is to me. Which brings to the point here, have I grown up and beginning to lose touch with what the average 16, 17-year-olds are thinking?

Well, why am I talking about this? This is because I will be teaching these 16-year-olds in more than a months' time and as I want to get into their books, I hope I will be able to reach out to them in one way or another. I think I am still in their generation and a gap such as the dirty Sungai Gombak ravine could not have existed ( hey, at least I am still watching American Idol ) but somehow I feel that I may not be able to understand their MTV yo, duh speech so well anymore. Come to think about it, I am just at least 5 years older than them but I think I may need to make a little effort to discover my adolescent side again.

Which is why I am making myself free every Wednesday 10pm to catch Gossip Girl, the latest It show in the US. I used to watch O.C., One Tree Hill and my favourite, favourite Gilmore Girls when I was growing up but I'm more into Ugly Betty and House these days. Gossip Girl is fine but the antics of the queen bee and the lot of beautiful, rich youngsters just do not really float my boat this time. I really hope my future students are not brats like them. All in all, it is really not that difficult watching TV anyway. Besides, I can claim to know the US Top 40 like the back of my hand and I do know which team is winning in the EPL although the NBA's just lost on me, so tell me do you think are my worries valid pals?

A picture tells a thousand words...

I simply love this picture. This is a picture of a Palestinian Muslim woman carrying an Israeli girl which was taken in the conflict-torn Gaza strip. I used this picture as the concluding picture for the series of picture slide shows in my pre-reading activity when I was teaching the poem The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy.

In that, I brought to light the on-going conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian sides to contrast against the theme of the futility of war in the poem. Overall, I am glad to say that the presentation was quite a satisfying one with my ever creative partner, Ying Ying who had contributed to the brilliant idea of having a mock press conference in the while-reading activity. We have both loved The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy and what is better than teaching something that you truly enjoy yourself?



Nevertheless, our lecturer took that opportunity to guide us into a discussion on whether it is appropriate to bring sensitive issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into the classroom, with all due respect to our country being a Muslim country. However, I should also say that this kind of activity can only be applied to a high-level classroom as the students would need to have some previous knowledge on this issue for the pre-reading activity to be effective.

Subsequently, it was the picture which saved the day as it summed up our non-confrontational approach in tackling the 'sensitive' issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Appropriate or not appropriate aside, we also voiced out our opinion on bringing the discussion of current issues into the classroom. Ultimately, being the open-minded TESLians that we are, we concluded that we have no qualms about the discussion of sensitive or current issues in the classroom, hey, after all, our duty is to educate a generation of thinking Malaysians, and not yes-men right? Pn. Noraini also gave her blessing in this as she felt that we could not find a better time to talk with our students about this relevant issues than now. As have been said, better late than never (or pregnant, that's another story with another lecturer...)

To teach or not to teach grammar

AN ODE TO A DELECTABLE BORE!

Oh Mr. Brown!

How I wish grammar

was as interesting,

as you.

The only active

or passive things

to me are your

movements.

Who cares about

verbs, unless you're

holding, kissing, touching, stroking, caressing,

my ____?

If you want,

you can even make it

carefully, softly, gently, lovingly, continually,

adverbial.

Oh Mr.Brown!

Don't you know that

divine, handsome, suave, cuddly, heroic

adjectives only apply

to you?

Oh Mr.Brown!

Your tenses are all wrong.

The present counts

not the past.

Oh Mr.Brown!

I wish you taught

Maths, History, Science, Cooking and Netball

too.

At least then

I'd enjoy them even

though I don't

understand them,

either.

Kate Jones

Looking back, I have never really taught grammar in any of my simulated teaching. Mr Lim, my 'sit in' simulated teaching lecturer has always stressed that teachers should never ever teach grammar as an item in the lesson. Hey, he even failed my friend's presentation for her attempt to teach transitive/ intransitive verbs throughout the lesson. But then again, some lecturers emphasise on the teaching of the grammar items in the presentation stage, so I am just keeping my fingers crossed that I won' t have them as my supervisors next semester, hehe.

Nevertheless, we still have to fill in the language focus in the lesson plan. Therefore, my all-time-favourite is adjectives simply because there is no need to go through the drudgery of past, present and what not in adjectives and it comes in naturally in our speech. In the mean time, I am still trying to figure out how we can indirectly teach grammatical items in our lesson, I mean drills will be quite a bore after some time. Anyway, I do not think my grammar had benefited much from the lessons I used to have in school. I think I will dread the day when my students ask me to explain those wretched rules, if only I could quote our sifu' favourite phrase, English Is A Crazy Language again and again...

Opps, so so sorry for the late entry

Ooh la la... 14 weeks have just gone by... and so far I have only done 4 simulated teaching, albeit with me putting a one-woman-show in the last one. Sigh, how am I going to teach in my practicum if I had only taught individually once? I think my simulated teaching in my second method of literature was more organized, I don't know, maybe it' because I had only handle the set induction and the pre section (not entirely up to me coz my partner thought that I am a better story teller). I think my individual presentation was alright, but I committed a very grave mistake by forgetting to remove the F word from my text ( so much so for using authentic text). Thank God my lecturer was sports about it . Overall, I find that the more I practised before the teaching presentation, the more nervous I was during the real thing itself. I think what really matters is having planned out everything that we want to say and do in the lesson. Gosh, there's so much more to tell, gotta plan out what to say here next... ciao...

p/s: never believed that I am the person who would set up a blog, me being a private person and all that, ahem (people, don't laugh, deep deep down inside, I am very shy you see...) Pn Adelina, so so sorry for missing the deadline for setting up this blog...