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...