Listening
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Handout from the session
Feedback on activities from the session
I had been looking forward to another activity provided by our teacher but I was very surprised when I realized that her teaching was just a disaster :-). Fortunately, after a minute I understood that she gave us an example of a bad teaching. I didn't expect it so I really enjoyed the activity because it was something different than the previous ones. I honestly appreciat the fact that thanks to the sessions I have learned how to use the stages when teaching and how much important they are. I would like to know if the teachers at our university are really so positive all the time or they are just good actors. Every teacher I have had from practical language and methodology was so positive with neverending smile on his/her face. It's very inspirational for me as a person and as a teacher because it's quite difficult for me to stay positive when I have problems in my life. On the other hand, teaching could be also some kind of therapy for the teacher because when I had some problems I remember that teaching students helped me to forget those problems at least for a while.
It was the last session of the semester and I would like to say that this subject was absolutely the most useful subject for me as a teacher during my study at the university.
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In "Microteaching", the leader of the center was Martina Staviařová and it was again a great example of teaching. She is a young girl and I am sure that she is going to be an excellent teacher. Her English is very good and her presentation as well. I always observe a teacher's body language, face expression and his/her voice and I must say that everybody in our classroom who led a learning center was excellent.
To sum up, Martina's teaching was really great but I had problem with the topic she had chosen. It was something about ecology or enviroment and that's not exactly my cup of tea so I noticed that I was not paying as much attention to the activity. That's the problem with teaching - I have 12 students in my classroom and it's practically impossible to chose a topic which would attract all 12 students. The solution to this is probably the simple one - we have to know our students as much as we can and chose topics they like so one time we satisfy 8 students and another time 4 students. At the end everybody is happy :-).
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Evaluation of listening texts in a coursebook I use
For my teaching I use "New English File Elementary" course book. Generally, I am quite satisfied with the book and the listening activities inside the book are also very good ones. The only problem I sometimes had was the topic of a listening activity. I teach adults so they weren't very interested in topics like "X-Factor" or "Fashion" but I understand that this book is primarely for young learners. On the other hand, there were many listening activities that were very useful and interesting for my students. They especially enjoyed the activity where they had to investigate a crime but the most interesting listening activities for my students are the ones with a video.
I thing that listening activity from the book are very well structured. There is always a Pre-listening activity (usualy an article and important vocabulary for the listening) and some exercises for While-listening (exercise with gaps). Moreover, after each activity there are some questions and suggestion for students to discuss the listening. The quality of recordings is excellent and I really appreciated the fact that in videos there were both an American actor and an British actor so students could compare the American accent with the British accent. Thanks the videos listening activities they could learn some words the Americans and the British use differently (e.g. lift - elevator, shop-store etc). I could strongly recommend the book for young learners. Unfortunately, my students have to learn two levels in only three months so I also had to choose more difficult activities for them but to be honest, it's impossible to teach two levels in such a short time and the course is rather about presentation of tenses and vocabulary than about teaching. The truth is that I sometimes TEACH them the way I have been taught at the university (the stages, no pressure etc) and they really LOVE these activites but unfortunately we would need two years for this, not only three months.
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Lesson plan
Material used: Materials used.pdf
