I will first begin with the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson plan:
Strengths
Main Activity 1
A student-centred learning approach, which is important for a CALL lesson (Towndrow, 2007), can be noted in the main activities 1 and 2. There were signs of collaboration between peers as they were told to converse using a script and provide construction feedback to each other. As mentioned by Chapelle and Jamieson (2008), providing learners with opportunities for interaction, between the learner and the computer or between the learner and another person, during CALL activities, is beneficial because ‘interaction often entails getting clarification about the meaning of the language that learners do not initially understand.’
Main Activity 2
Instant Feedback System allows prompt responses and feedback between learners and their peers, or facilitator and the learners. As learners count on teachers to provide them with explicit instruction and evaluation of their performance through specific feedback on responses in class (Chapelle and Jamieson, 2008), it is essential to allocated time for such feedback session during lesson.
Follow-up Activity (Homework)
The self-evaluation task, which is a form of assessment (washback) is crucial in the language learning process. This will allow student to be critical thinkers and take charge of their own learning as well. In addition, this is good form of checking for students’ understanding after the end of a lesson and teacher can place better emphasis and preparation for the upcoming lessons.
Weaknesses
Pre-activity
I felt that the CALL material, video scenes of Joey enunciates spitting in Friends, used is not pitched for the lesson. Though the video does show Joey enunciates spitting, this was overshadowed by the humour in the clip. As such, students might not be able to link that the spitting of words is actually caused by enunciating of the end consonants.
Follow-up Activity (Homework)
A self-evaluation in the form of writing a justification of the learner’s grade seems to be vague. Teacher could have provided some guidelines, perhaps in a form of a rubric, on what is expected of the learners in their reflection. This will allow students to make linkages between their learning processes to the assessment of their product.
In General
The entire lesson lacks of creativity and dynamic. Most of the time spent in the lesson is on teacher doing an explicit teaching before students performed the allocated task. Differentiated learning is not noted as well. Despite the students are of the weaker abilities in the class, the need for differentiated learning is still needed in order to motivate the better learners and to prevent discourage in the weaker lot. There was no much room of exploration for the students. As stated by Towndrow (2007), students ought to be ‘active, engaged and self-reliant and open-minded’ in their pursuit of knowledge.
Based on the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson plan, I felt that behaviourist theory is being enacted. Signs of behaviourist, such learning through observation (teacher plays a video in most of the segments), imitation (students were told to converse using the same script) and modelling (students were taught to take note of the expressiveness during reading), are prominent in the lesson.
There are signs of interactionist theory as well, when students were told to work collaboratively with their peers to accomplish a common goal, in this case, the task allocated. Students were also learning from the MKO (More Knowledgeable One) from their peers during the feedback sessions.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI feel that there is some balance between student(during collaborative learning) and teacher (explicit teaching of concepts) centered learning and it would therefore be unfair to just call it teacher centered. But I agree with you that the lesson seems to lack creativity...how are the kids going to be active, engaged and self-reliant and open-minded, if we do not allow for it to happen in the lesson eh? :)
Hi Xiao Ting,
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point that the video clip may not be suitable for the objectives of the lesson. Perhaps if the teacher wishes to use the video to emphasize the importance of enunciation, a clear explanation following the video clip is needed.
I also felt that the video does not truly mesh with the rest of the lesson, as the lesson's objectives are mainly focused on tone and pitch, which are suprasegmental features of speech. The enunciation of /p/ in the video, however, focuses on the segmental level instead, which is entirely different.
However, I would have to disagree with your first point about Main Activity 1 being collaboration and interaction -- the two imply that conversation is natural, but the student-pairs are in fact given a script to read from. Evaluation is also given based on a fixed set of rubrics (please correct me if I remembered wrongly) so it is no better than simply ticking off a checklist. Real interaction and constructive learning does not take place.
That said, I agree with your point that the issue of differentiated learning is not addressed. The lesson does seem to be much too structured for students to truly explore pronunciation on their own, and higher-ability students may be unmotivated as the tasks do not pose much of a challenge.
As Sakeena says I also do feel that there is some form of dynamics in the lesson plan, when it comes to the parts on the forums so it isn't entirely teacher-centered although we could do some improvements on the explicit teaching part (one of the most teacher centered parts of the lesson plan :<) when it comes to this lesson plan. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Ting,
ReplyDeleteI do agree with you that the lesson plan reflected behaviourist and interactionist theories dominantly. The modeling of the teacher would result to a habit formation, which ultimately the students would adopt and emulate in their speech.
However, I do feel that another weakness of the paring strategy is that the students are of equal ability and they might not be learning so much from a MKO since they share about the same level of knowledge. I feel that although the strategy to pair is a good one, it might prove not to be beneficial if a situation arises that both the students are confused and either of them can clear each other’s doubts. Then it could lead to more confusion among them instead of learning the right concepts from each other. I feel it would work much better if they were paired with students of different language proficiency for it to reap better results.
Suhailah