1. Based on your preference, what kind of classroom activity do you like most and which one do you like the least?
Above all the courses I take so far, I like the one that offers students opportunities to show their ideas or themselves. The least I like is anything that does with math or any thing cramming.
2. Can you recall some very fun activity you experienced recently in class? Please describe it.
I like the “show and tell” in English listening and speaking class. Every period of time, we are assigned to do “show and tell”, which is a program you can show everybody what you got. As long as you like it, your topic can include all kinds of things. Now we just finished our show and tell round two, and to compare with our first round, everybody has made a great progress on not only their content but also their performances on the stage. Although it was really a hard work to prepare the content, the program has made us understand more and more about our classmates and brought us a lot of fun. The subtitle editing program is also a lot of fun in Professor Gina’s class. It inspired our creativity and brought us laughter as well. I like those activities full of joy.
3. When encountering some kind of difficult knowledge, do you have any strategies to process it? I would either ask my classmates or go on the Internet to find the information. I would email TA or professor in the end if everything just doesn’t work.
4. Based on your responses to Q1, Q2, and Q3, can you tell the type of learner you are? Why?
I am a self-starter. I know what I am going to do and what I want so bad every period in my life. However, I am lack of composure and persistence. Also, I have a poor memory, but I try my best to keep on with others.
In my opinion, the class that involves the students more, the better quality of teaching students receives. Hence, hands-on activity, discussion and reflection are the better teaching method I prefer. I don’t like reading and listening very much because they involve students less and usually make students fall asleep. Take myself as an example, I’m now a teaching assistant for a course called “professional dialogue” and my job is to involve the students participate in class more and make them practice their English speaking. The students and I have to meet for an hour every other week. During the hour, I ask them to do the readings and exercises on the textbook, but they seem to be very inactive. Later on I change the teaching method. We put away the textbook and simply talk about the given topics. They are very happy that they can get rid of the readings and exercises from the boring textbook. We chat for an hour and they think they learn more on vocabulary and speaking when chatting rather then doing the works on the textbook. However, the works on the textbook are assigned by the teacher that we can’t simply get rid of the textbook. Hence, now we spend half of the time on the book and half of the time of chatting. From the experience we can tell that the more involvements in class activate students’ eagerness of learning.
回覆刪除I can’t recall any impressive and interesting in-class activities recently, but I’ve heard a very interesting one. My friend who is also a college student now major in politics told me the other day they had a very special in-class activity: the teacher walked into the classroom and said, “now I am going to give out a hundred points as bonus, but the rule is that 1. each of you has to get at least one point, if not, I will deduct ten points on the person who gets no point. 2. if any one of you can persuade all the others to give you the hundred points, the one can pass the course without coming to this class on the following days. 3. thirty minutes later I will come back and I want to see the result.” After saying these words, the teacher left, leaving the astonished students in the classroom. The core theme of the class is to let students experience how to cooperate with others in a time limit and at the same time maintain their own rights. I think this kind of class will be very interesting and challenging for students to participate in. Because within the time limit they have to negotiate, communicate and persuade each other.
When encounter difficulties, I would first google it online and find some source from .org websites. If I still cannot understand, I will send an email to my tutor and ask him/her.
I think I am a kinaesthetic learner that I prefer interactions in class. At the same time, I think I am an emotional learner because I occasionally start or stop learning something simply because I feel like doing it. If I want to have a better learning quality in the future, I need to improve myself more on my learning motive and persistence.
By the way, I also like the “show and tell” activity very much. It is a very creative-demanding activity. People have to pop up with various ideas instantly to respond to the others reaction. I think this kind of activity can build up confidence and make people know each other within a short time. It’s good to know that you have found out your personal learning disadvantage and knew to improve it. We both need to enhance and prolong our learning persistency. Now we can start with how to do it. : ]