Week 3 - Teachers' Role
=======================
This week, we start our discussion based on the SITES case CL007
http://sitesdatabase.cite.hku.hk/M2/case2/CL007/Index.asp?case_ID=CL007
This is a case that teachers are teaching English as a foreign language to upper secondary students. Students were taught with different vocabularies in English, and the students were asked to look for more details in the vocabularies, such as meaning, photos, or other information. After gathering all kinds of information, students were asked to put everything into a webpage under assistance of IT helpers.
As mentioned in the page, the teacher’s role was to guide and oversee the students’ efforts to advance their knowledge of English through the creation of Web pages, as they utilized technical vocabulary and learned to manage Internet resources. Moreover, the teachers provided an opportunity for different learning experience to the students, and an facilitator who offer them with a chance for peer learning.
By LEUNG Yiu Tong Eric
This case is an example of teaching English as a foreign language just as Eric said. Roles of teachers are changing throughout the educational process. At the beginning of this project, teacher act as a guide. She organized the class to do this project and give them some useful instructions including explain how to do the project, support team buliding of students and so on. And the roles of teachers change to students in the progress, teachers received suppert from the students both the management of computers and the creation of Web pages. Teachers just provide basic orientation of the course and the management of the group. In the end of the project, in my point of view, teachers maybe need to do a summary to see the effect of this project, in the mean time, they need to decide contine to do it or not.
By Cissy
Hi Eric and Cissy,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your opinions about the conclusion of teachers' role of teaching English as a foreign language.
After reading the article and your conclusions, I recall my primary school time in China: when I was in Grade 3, the school released a new policy that all the grades would be divided into two kinds of classrooms: one is the traditional one, and the other will have two more courses: English and computer. That was when I began my English and computer study.
During the study process, two teachers' role seemed quite different: my English teacher always encourage us to try speaking and listening regardless of fearing of making mistakes. She told us that "the more mistakes you make, you more words you will correct, and thus the more you would learn and improve." So, when in the English class, she always played some English cartoon TV series and even music, and taught us one by one. We were motivated and active in learning. Thus, at the end of the term, most of us got very good marks in the exam. I think her role is just like a motivator, with limited supervision and let us grow up with more freedom.
While, my computer teacher's role was quite different. He was a very strict man, and every time he told us to bring slipper, textbook, never eat or drink or speak with others during the class, and just follow what he let us to do, step by step. Every time we were just like a follower or copier to do everything he let us to do, and know nothing about other knowledge. Although the result of exam was also satisfying, yet we felt that computer was such a boring class and we never enjoyed having this class. I think the computer teacher ignored one important thing: to help raise students' self-learning, independence, exploring unknown area, something like that.
Would you guys share something about your teachers' role in middle school or university? Thank you very much!
--
Post by CHAN, Kwoon Kay Ricky
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRicky, you seems to have experienced two very extreme ways of teaching, one was interesting and inspiring while the other was quite 'drilling' that the teacher lost students' motivation. I can easily feel which teaching style you like more and which has a positive effect towards your learning and loving for your study.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I had most of my secondary school in Najing, China, and I was able to take the last year of senior secondary in Finland. Hence, I am glad that can experience two distinguished education system. Take English courses as an example, in Finland school, we didn't have any homework specifically for English subject. It was more like a cross-curricula learning experience, which meant we used English as a tool to do other project such as a study about whether in Tempere. In this project, as we needed to do a lot description, in our English lessons, the teacher would introduce lots of adjectives and related grammars such as reported speech, linking verbs. Hence, instead of just transmitting pre-determined knowledge and correcting errors students made, the teacher would construct teaching due to students' needs, and encouraged us to make real use of language skills learnt.
However, the English courses in Nanjing were more teacher-centered and exam-based even though I went to a school named as foreign language secondary school. We did have activities such as drama show, school TV station, which evolved us in more authentic use of English, but concerning daily classroom practice, it was still the teacher’s delivery nearly made up the whole lesson, as result that the only job for us students seemed to listen and do exercise.
From my own experience, together with reading your comments, teachers’ roles do have a huge influence and can differ students’ learning experience, as they are the ones who do frontline teaching with students. Thus, teachers should modify their method of teaching to encourage development of individual as a whole person, promote learners’ capacity of knowing how to learn, and response to learners’ needs, instead of just transmitting knowledge.
_____________________
By Liu, Feifei