Practical English Teaching (assignment for Thursday, November 13)

The lesson plans that we usually make are completely useless. It controlls teacher's everything-even every single word. As a result, a teacher looks like a robot in the classroom. Lesson plans have to be a lesson plans. It's not that controlls everything. Why do we make a lesson plan as a teacher? To waste time? No. The reason why we make a lesson plan is to have a better class. Then, we should think about the lesson plans we usually make. They usually look like a thesis. Do we really need that? Maybe no. To prepare a class, we just need some guidelines, not every single words that is prepared before class. Teachers should be flexible.
To make our lesson plans better, we should think about what to teach. After thinking about the things to teach, we should think about the way how to teach. And then, we can write down in a small table or on a paper. That is just the guideline. To have a better idea, we should think creatively, and it would be better if we have some experience to teach.
One of the biggest problem of Korean English education is students can solve their questions very well, but they can not communicate with foreigners. The reason why we learn English is to communicate with foreigners, not to get a good grade on an exam. Also there are too many students in one class-over 30. So as a prospective teachers, we should think about how to teach English practically.
In my opinion, in case of English, the gap between a good student and bad student is very big. We can make the students make groups as their English speaking ability. For example, if there are 10 students, then first grade and tenth grade students become a group, and second grade and ninth grade students become another group. In that case, the level of each group will not big. First grade student can teach tenth grade student, because they are in one group.
I like activity. One good activity that we can use in the classroom is role-play. Students can enjoy the role-play itself as well as English. Then, the class will be full of energy. We can think of many practical ways to teach English as a prospective teacher.

When I imagine practical English teaching in the class, students can also learn English effectively with a large of student. In addition to, teachers should prepare in a short time and it could be flexible by sudden situation. Therefore these are indentified pop-quiz, task based learning and group working.

First of all, pop quiz is simple and easy way to evaluate students’ understanding and achievements. Teacher can reflect these result if they make the next lesson plan. And because of this unannounced quiz, students prepare it by reviewing or previewing what they learn or will do. However this pop quiz should not difficult and complicated to students. It might happen to give it up in case it is difficult to get satisfied score. So, I believe simple pop quiz is helpful for leading class and teaching English.

Secondly, I prefer to work some hand –out and tasks on students own. I mean it is not good a way of lecturing in teaching English. English is one of language many people use in the world. According to this teacher should teach a way of solving English questions themselves. It is effective for student and teacher is a little easy and comfortable in the class. Some people might say prepare all material for tasks using during class is hard and bothersome. But I can definitely say It can be used the next semester and the next class. So, by preparing perfectly for the first time, the next time will be easy for teacher.

Lastly, group activity is the great way to practical English teaching for a large class. A teacher couldn’t manage around 30 students by oneself. So making a group in five or six students and then teacher chooses a group leader to deliver teacher’s order or present their task they completed during class. That is practical to manage class in case many students are in one class.

To sum up, practical English teaching is not only for teacher but also for students. It is positive effect that one thing is taking a pop quiz; doing based on tasks rather than lecture and the last thing is group working. I believe these are pretty good for English education both teachers and students.

In an era of rapid globalization, learning English is a vital survival skill and many Koreans spend huge amounts of cash on private English lessons. Last year, more than 16,446 Korean schoolchildren were sent overseas further proving that studying English has become a top priority across the nation. Students currently begin learning English during the third grade of elementary school up and continue through to high school for 10 years. But, Most Korean students don't reach a reasonable level of proficiency in their English. I think they might ignore the essential question: What is it to learn a foreign language? What is the reason why they don't have a reasonable level of proficiency in English?

Basically, they haven`t had a chance to use English outside the classroom. English education in Korea focus mainly on teaching grammatical rules. They must study English conversation and writing in their classroom.

English class should have to put more stress on conversation and writing than on reading. But, We need to have an extensive vocabulary of English in order to speak and write in English. And Students should have to memorize a wide vocabulary of English before they take english conversation class and write an essay or a diary. and They have to try and make use of every opportunity of speaking English in their class. For example, They have to speak in English in order to have good grade in their conversation class. And They have to submit a diary to their teacher every day. Of course, they have to write in english. And They have a time to watch a movies every Friday morning because Movies give them good practice in speaking English. And then, They have to memorize the line, and then they rehearse every Friday evening. They play the movie every Sunday afternoon in their classroom. I think they will be getting better and better in English. And Writing a diary is also a good way to learn english. If students can write English well, They can read it much more.

Whenever they are exposed to English, their English skill will improve. And Students can be motivated in the immersion town and be interested in studying English constantly. These ways will help students learn English as quickly as possible are working.

I believe that setting goals that are not restricted to grammatical or linguistic competence is the first priority when it comes to practical English teaching. Other than grammatical rules, the techniques should be designed to engage learners in authentic use of language for meaningful purposes. To achieve this, fluency has to come before accuracy. In the case of secondary teachers not fluent in English, the technology might come in handy. For instance, video, television, audiotapes, the internet, computer software could be used in a classroom as a helpful device. To expend the idea of practical English teaching, teaching nonverbal communication, which is subconscious in a native speaker, could be one really practical subject. For example, teaching body language, gestures, eye contact, physical distance, and other nonverbal messages that are commonly used among native speakers might be interesting. In addition to this, providing students with communicative environment is very important. To manage this with many learners in a productive way, what teachers need to do is to encourage them and generally guide rather than pointing out details.

To speak honestly, there is no concept of practical English teaching to me. Until now, to study English means to memorize words and grammar and to read materials written in English and understand what these is. Therefore to teach English is not a far from this to me. In other word, teacher introduces a lot of grammar in detailed and just to teach students in the way I have been taught.

However, as I have been taught by Jason, the word ‘practical’ comes to position in my thought. As he says, for example, lesson plan is not to show to seniors or principal. In order to organize and find the most effective way to teach English, teacher has to draw up the lesson plan. Therefore, I can set exact principles for practical English teaching. The principles are the textbook-free class, and the interactive class.

First of all, I am not bound to textbooks. In my class, I will be trying to provide a lot of various materials, which can cover the textbook in terms of context. Almost textbooks are boring and so students seem to be reluctant to these. For improvement of students’ English skills, teacher should use a kind of animations which are suitable for the purpose.

Secondly, students sometimes can lead the class by themselves. Teacher just provides a clue, and students are searching solutions and they present their solutions to other students. Students can help each other for solution and they can ask their teacher a help.

In my conclusion, we have ignored the importance of practical English teaching beyond dispute. Teachers are trying to find the useful and funny way to teach English. If necessary, bring the most leading experts on practical English teaching to Korea and reform our English education system properly in our conditions

Teaching English practically is important for both teachers and students. Practical English teaching is beneficial for teachers to teach efficiently in class, and for students to learn English in effective and easy way.

In my opinion, considering students' propensity is one way to teach English practically. To illustrate, when it comes to speaking lessons, teachers should understand Korean student's characteristic and attitude. They are shy and passive in class. Of course, they are afraid of speaking in front of the class many people in English. Therefore, if teachers really want students to give more opportunity to speak in English, in stead of let students speak in front of the people, it would be a good idea to make students talk in small groups. Then, afterward, when students are used to talking in English and ready to do so, teachers could give them chance to speak in front of the class.

Another way to be practical in teaching English is using sympathy. To think in students's shoes is important to prepare the lessons. When teachers make their lesson plans and choose activities used in class, sympathy could be helpful. Thinking, imaginating and comprehending what students really want and need in their shoes and choose right activities and make lesson plans. For example, one of my English teachers tried to teach English by listening to pop songs. Using pop songs in class is a good and also interesting way to learn English, However, she turned old pops which are just her tastes not students' tastes. If she had turned newest pop songs, it might have been enjoyable and effective class. Regarding this, we can say that using sympathy is important for practical English teaching.

To sum up, considering students' propensity and using sympathy are useful ways to teach English practically. I hope teachers and students to enjoy English by applying those ways.

It is sure that Practical English Teaching is difficult to think. Lots of English teaching methods exist, but most of them are impossible to use in the class. Because there are some limits such as a great number of students in a class or discrepancy in student's ability - there are a lot of students who have ever studied abroad for a number of years in theses days.
Therefore, to be practical with our lesson planning time, we have to have a thorough grasp of the students ability. Because I think contents that are suitable to each of the students ability are the most important thing to tickle their fancy about English. So, we have to adjust contents to teach or teaching materials to use according to their ability after having a grasp of that. Then, we can reduce the time to plan our teaching lesson.

Another thing to think about Practical English Teaching is learning material which is easy for teacher to use in the class. There are lots of multimedia programs relating to learning new language. And moreover, most of schools are well equipped with various electronic machines to show multimedia programs to students. All of audio and video materials can enhance their learning interests, I think. So it can be the easiest material to teach students.

In fact, I haven't had an interest about Practical English Teaching except for the class. But from now on, I will have to develop thinking about Practical English Teaching as a future English teacher.

I think to teach English practically, we don't need the lesson plan that described all the behavior teacher should do in the class. Lesson plan is not a commander of teacher, but an assistant which helps teacher's efficient lecture. Moreover teacher must spend much time to make detailed lesson plan. It is waste of time. General lesson plan is more practical than specific lesson plan. In the class anything that wasn't described in the lesson plan can take place. Teachers who act like a machine according to lesson plan can't cope with this emergency. Teacher should be flexible to the situation. So the lesson plan that directs all the behavior teacher should do in the class is useless. And General lesson plan is easier to make. So we can spare time and can do other creative activity for the time. Teacher shouldn't be bound by lesson plan, Teacher should develop flexibility that can adapt most effective way in the situation. This is the practical way to teach English.
Students, especially Korean student, are passive. To be fluent in language, however, student should take active attitude. So the learning material that can induce students' interest is needed. To appeal to students, text should contain contents that they have interest in. And images like pictures or photos are effective materials too. And various form of material that changes everyday are good to attract student's concern too. It is also a good way to make test that involves students' participation like role play, presentation, and group discussion.
The most important thing in learning English is active attitude toward English. So to teach practically, these kind of materials and preparations are needed. After all, for both good practical ways to teach English and good ways to teach practical English, much effort is required. That is our duty.

To define practical English teaching in my own way, it would be helpful to think of today's English class in high schools. In fact, in real English class in high school, teachers tend to teach students reading and grammar only. So, it is easy to lose student's interest on English and also reduce their active attitude toward classes. In addition, this kind of class isn't useful to learn a new language at all. It should be stressed that English speaking and writing class are needed to teach them English more practically.

First, lesson plans that we were used to make isn't practical at all. They just attach importance to form, and it takes a long time to make one. What is needed to us is to make a lesson plan simple and brief. A lesson plan should be some kind of guidelines for teachers to follow because teachers should be able to handle sudden situation in the class. This would require less time to make lesson plans accordingly.

Next, the most practical English materials are the very teachers themselves. Of course, using video clips, audiotapes, and computers is useful way to teach as well. However, what I think is the most important is a teacher. In a class, teachers can be creative in using textbook. It is difficult to design a lesson totally differently in reality, while using their creativity and ability to teach, teachers can apply textbook contents to practical English teaching. For example, they can tell students about foreign culture related with reading part in the textbook or they can teach writing skills by showing applying sentence form of reading part.

Lastly, for practical teaching, it is essential that there should be student's active attitude toward classes and willingness to study. When it comes to learning something, learner's attitude is really important. One of the ways that elicit their active attitude in a large class is to make group and give students group activity. In a small number of group members, students tend to discuss something and study hard. So, grouping would really be useful and effective way to teach each member of class students, and it would be easy way to handle whole class for teachers. What is needed to teachers is to encourage students in doing their best with friendly advice.

In reality, it is hard for teachers to do practical English teaching under current system in high school. I believe the most important matter in teaching practically is teacher's mind and capability to do practical teaching using textbook.

Many people say practical English teaching can be useful if there are many devices that can help students learn English. Yes, it’s really true. Using appropriate materials like video, newspaper, etc. can efficiently increase learner’s ability. In addition, it can make teachers use limited lesson time ideally because it can reduce time to explain the details long-windedly.

However, I think the most important thing in practical English teaching is giving students more chances that they can express their opinions and thoughts. Today’s English class forces students to become passive in the lesson because lesson time is limited and teacher have to give information as much as possible in provided time. Therefore, students only attend the lesson without any thought about their improvement of English ability. This kind of teaching can’t bring real development of English ability to students. Although lesson time is rather short to teach further English knowledge, teachers have to put some time to give chances that make students use English in the English class. Finally, I think, if experiencing English in the class is continued, it can ultimately lead English class to advance in more practical way. If participation of students is increased through this activity, teachers can manage the class easier.

Another practical way to teach English is always listening students’ suggestions carefully. Class should be changed with change of English education system. Creating own teaching principle is very important. But teachers must hear other people’s opinion to make better English class because sticking to own principle can be harmful in the long view. Especially, students are the main body of the class and they can suggest creative way to learn and teach English more practically. So, we concentrate what students are saying.

There may be other practical way to teach English. But the important thing is that teachers should try to make the best class in everyday life.

It is very interesting to think about practical English teaching, since our main focus has been teaching practical English. I think teaching practical English more concerns with the content and learning context, where as practical English teaching is more about possible methods and techniques that can be used to teach English efficiently. When teaching students in secondary schools, teachers do not get a lot of time preparing for their classes. In reality, there are too many other things that teachers have to deal with other than teaching, which makes it difficult for them to concentrate on preparing for their classes.

It is true that experienced teachers (teaching for 10 or more years) do not need to spend hours in lesson planning. However, teachers in their first or second years need to spend a considerable amount of time preparing for classes. Most of them probably have their teaching principles, and are aware of some leaning methodologies. I think it is always useful to have several kinds of lesson formats (for listening, grammar learning, reading, and writing) prepared in advance, so that teachers can just apply them in their lessons. For example, when preparing listening lesson plans, teachers can use a certain approach (engage, define, apply, practice, and integrate). By having several good methodologies or approaches of their own would make it a lot more easier for teachers to prepare for classes.

Also, grouping students in different ways can be an effective way to manage in a class with many students. In order for students to actively participate in class, they need to be in groups. In Korea, most of the teachers have employed transmission-based learning, which is one of the biggest obstacles in language learning. I think language learning is about communication, not about grammar or theory. Unfortunately, it is impossible to promote active participations from students when they are in one large group. Teachers can use different grouping methods including pair works. Teachers should keep this in mind that students should be given detailed, step-by-step instructions for activities. Without such instructions or guidelines, students are likely to get off track, not participating in designated activities.

I think practical English teaching is focused on being communicative. In English class, a teacher and students have to be willing to talk and give information to each other. In case of teacher, I think the teacher should not deliver only his own knowledge to students. That is because students would be bored, disinterested, or uninvolved in the class. Teachers have to set an accurate lesson objective and consider students-involved activities related to lesson objective.

In this stage, I think lesson plans are needed. of course, the lesson plans that we used to make are impractical. The reason is the lesson plans are intended to show someone, not to be used in classroom. I think how convenient are the lesson plans in the real teaching situation is important. For lesson plans to be useful, it need some formats of guidelines such as simple and enumerated activities.

On the other hand, when it comes to students-involved activities related to lesson objective, I think it is important to attract student's attentions and raise particitaion of students by using various materials. If thoughout those activities, teachers would give students feedback about their achivements in the class, the class could be more communicative. Furthermore, If this way would be applyed to students, teachers could approach the practical English teaching.

I strongly suggest that we'd better not to put a lot of time for making a lesson plan. There would be various kinds of unexpected-moments in class. so it might be a little waste of time to put too much effort on making lesson plan.
In my case, I love to use my little pink piggy doll. To break the ice in the class room, and to make students feel relaxed, I used to throw my pig doll to random students and make them speak. Students don't really get to be embarresed, when they recieved the doll. They thought that's fun. So I believe that the doll also can be a learning material to help them to speak.

Second material I suggest is that letting students make their own paragraph, using the sentences or words that they learned before. If it's a dialogue, they can perform in front of their colleuge. And if it's a paasage, I as a teacher can proofread those for them. Then they also can have a chance to be creative with the materials that they learned, and they can also have time to notice what they've been wrong with their own material at the same time.

Lastly, I definitely belive that teachers should not be afraid of facing the unexpected moments. To prepare for those, I bet the Toeic Speaking test for the English teacher is the best way to get rid of fear. What I've been experienced is that I prepared for video clip for students. But in class, the computer didn't work well, and the speakers were out of order. So I had to perform the things, happening in the video clip, by myself. It looked a little odd, but it was better than doing nothing, when the gadgets are not working well.

To be practical in teaching English, it is best to consider whether or not the materials and methods the teacher is using is affective. What I mean is the matter of quality is better than quantity because whichever materials you apply on students, it's no use if the students don't learn much things from it. Also by choosing/using the right material, the teacher can also save time. Then, how do we choose the appropriat material or teaching method? Beforehand, it is critical to know the level of the students. Are they on a high or low level? Each level has different goals to achieve. For example the students in low level needs to familiarize with the language English. According to their levels, the teacher need to select materials. In addition, there are times that the teacher uses media. Animation and movies and really good form of teaching material and it draws the student's attention easily but you have to think if the content is also good for education.

It is also important to get students to apply what they have learned. In my experience from high school, I would learn about principles about English grammer. Most of the time and after hearing teacher's explanation on the grammer, the teacher would move on saying you need to memorize it to get high marks on tests. This way, I had trouble getting the idea of some of the grammer because English like science or social studies, is not something that you can learn through words. Not only in terms of grammer, but in all ways in teaching/learning English, the importance of practicing and application cannot be emphasized enough.

One of the practical ways to teach English is contacting students closely. Teacher should try to hear, see and think students’ voices and opinions so that communicate and interact with them. Through this process, we get to consider lesson planning. So making lesson planning is naturally done. In addition, owing to coming from practical situation in class, those don’t only depend on text, have flexibility of realism and what students should know based on curriculum.

I think group work is very useful format in class. Cooperation, effort, ability and tolerance, etc should be to make group work successful in class. In the process of group work, we can discuss given common task and share our opinions. Therefore relationship is more smooth. It causes the synergy effect in class.

This topic reminds me our group lesson plan. While we make lesson plan, we considered 'way' of teaching english. We thinked about not only the things students will learn, but how to teach that more effectively. We have limited time, limited money and there are many students. Maybe there are more limitation in real teacher. I think practical english teaching is way to teach english that balance this situation and the goal of class.
No one make good lesson plan quickly at first time. But experienced teacher can make good lesson plan more quickly. My idea is make a part of lesson plan that can use in other class. For example, I did one activity with students and it was effective, show that activity plan to other teacher. This help the teacher to make more effective lesson plan in same time.
About learning material, we should think the cost. Give materials for each student is more effective then just show it, but we have limited money so we can't. I think using computer and projector easily catch the student's attention. Nowadays almost class has it so it will not difficult to prepare it. The problem is student's participation. To overcome this problem, teacher choice the things that may catch student's interest.
Practical activity is not easy to think. I think group presentation is quite practical. Teacher can manege it easily because it is group, and student should participate in presentation. And we can use simple task to make it quickly. The problem is we can't know each student understand it fully. So we use other ways to find it.