Journal 3

 Journal III (4/16 or 5/21):
Highlight anything that you have learned through this course and discuss why this is meaningful for your learning and instruction?

When I started studying English, I didn't like reading something. Reading is very boring process and it is a kind of burden to me. It is same as when I was studying Korean. I didn't like just reading. Naturally, I didn't have much time to develop my reading skills or strategies, so reading became bigger and bigger pressure to me.

 

The most important thing that I have learned through this course is that it changed my mind of reading not only as an English teacher of future but also as a second language learner now. Every approach, theory, or method helps to change my mind, but intensive reading and extensive reading part is the most impressive to me. Normally in middle school and high school English class, students read English text like intensively. I don't mean that intensive reading is bad or useless reading method. It has many strengths. Students can read the text very deeply and teacher can check students' reading easily and efficiently. However, honestly, this method is not that quite funny or interesting to students. As it is connected with Korean SAT test for subject of English, students think that English reading is boring and it is only for solving questions in English test. This thought was very fitted with me. I also thought like this, and that's why I didn't like reading something.

 

However, after I learned about extensive reading, my thought of English reading and English reading class have changed. First, I recognized that students can enjoy English reading. Of course, for achieving this thing, teacher should prepare authentic, useful, and interesting reading materials. Although, extensive reading doesn't give students to feel much about 'learning English', if they can enjoy 'reading', it is just very valuable thing. Reading as many as possible is could be a good English lesson. Second, when designing English reading class, teacher's role is truly important. If teacher prepare various, authentic and interesting activities, students' motivation of reading will be increased. It is same as reading materials. Extensive reading class could be changed many different ways, teacher's choice of reading materials can make difference of his or her class. And, it has a big influence on students' reading and studying. Therefore, as a future English teacher, I should keep in mind of these things.

 

Lastly, one semester of teaching reading class is little bit hard, but it is very impressed and valuable class to me. Thank you.

Lesson8. Live Young!

✓Chapter

<Live Young!>

 

✓Topic

<Health>

 

✓Lesson information

In this chapter, the main text introduces 3 old grandfathers who are living younger and healthier than that age of other grandfathers. From this text, students have some impressions about the importance of health. I want to focus on here. As I introduce more reading materials, I let them think about their health and healthy life.

 

✓What are these reading materials?

Because of this reason, I chose various reading materials. These very different reading materials can expand and add some useful information, and also put some diverse schema to students.

The first reading material is <six health tips>. It is not too long and written by easy words, so students can read this easily and they can get a useful tips for health.

The second one is <5 factors of good health>. It is quite similar with the first reading materials. These factors are very natural for keeping good health, but students usually hard to think about them. Therefore, it will be very useful.

The third text is the introducing of <WHO> (World Health Organization). It is famous organization for health, but many students don't know about it in detail. I found a site of introducing WHO, so students may enjoy this site and new information about WHO.

The last text is related with <Obesity>. The obesity of adolescents is increasing now. I want students to read this text and I hope that students notice the danger of obesity and the importance of eating food.

 

✓How can we use these reading materials?

I prepare some after-reading activities.

After reading the first and second reading materials, students will make their own health chart. These reading materials are related with tips of keeping good health, so students could make their own health chart based on these reading materials. I will leave the text for WHO as an extensive reading material. If students get useful information from this reading material, I think that's enough.

After reading <Obesity>, I let students check their health condition in scientific method. Although I used a word 'scientific', if students use just official and famous method for checking their health condition, any kinds of methods will be OK. After checking their health condition, they have to send me a result of it.

Lesson6. Creative Koreans, Revolutionary technology

✓Chapter

<Creative Koreans, Revolutionary technology>

 

✓Topic

<Historical and revolutionary technology>

 

✓Lesson information

This lesson is quite interesting. The main text introduces Korea's great revolutionary technologies or heritages like 'the Turtle Ship', 'Seokbinggo', and 'Jikji'. It is quite interesting chapter. However, in this chapter, there are only Korean technologies or heritages. So I decided to introduce other countries' historical and revolutionary technologies. More information is followed.

 

✓What are these reading materials?

I prepared 4 different countries' historical and revolutionary technologies which are 'The Great Wall', 'Colosseum', 'Acropolis', and 'Pyramid'. These are very famous historical and revolutionary technologies that students can easily come to them and have full interest of them.

Also, I didn't focus only just introducing information of them. I want to show many things related with them, so, in these reading materials, there are many other things like history, mistery things, structure of it, or some interesting episodes. These things could be interesting factors when students read these 4 reading materials.

 

✓How can we use these reading materials?

I will put some activities after reading materials. I put 2steps in there, the first step is after reading main text. Main text is introducing Korean historical and revolutionary technologies, so, after reading main text, I will let students to find another Korean historical and revolutionary technologies. It can be a good step of expanding background knowledge of students and also reminding main text that students had read.

The second step is reading 4 materials. After that, students should find one new thing or information that they had read from these materials. Share it with other classmates.

The third step is very similar with the first activity. After reading and sharing 1 new thing, students will find another historical and revolutionary technologies from different 3 countries. From these steps, students can do not only extensive reading but expand their background knowledge and schema which can be good tools for their further reading.

Lesson5. Guess Who?

✓Chapter

<Guess Who?>

✓Topic

<Novel>

    

✓Lesson information

This is a novel chapter. It introduces one of the Sherlock Holmes story for the main text. Students may enjoy this chapter because it is students' favorite genre (a detective and mystery story). However, as you know about the problem of the main text, it has limitation of introducing novels as many as possible. This chapter is very closely related with an extensive reading which is represented by the word 'fun reading', so I will supply reading materials for fun and more reading.

 

✓What are these reading materials?

I prepared 4 reading materials.

The first one is <Who is Sherlock Holmes?>. I chose this material for stimulating and building schema. The main text is related with Sherlock Holmes story, so it will help students to understand 'Sherlock Holmes and his story'.

The second one is one of the Sherlock Holmes story. I chose <A Scandal in Bohemia>. Students may enjoy reading this story and have fun.

The third text is for the great author <Ernest Hemingway>. The reason why I chose this text is that I want to introduce another kind of novel not just only detective or mysterious. So, before reading another kind of novel, I planned to introduce author and the brief information of new novel. This text takes this role. It can introduce briefly about new novel and its author. For this step, students can build schema of another novel.

The forth text is <The Old Man and the Sea>. It is Ernest Hemingway's most famous novel and it is so called 'masterpiece'. Just reading this novel itself is valuable. I want students to read many masterpieces of novel.

 

✓How can we use these reading materials?

When I designed this lesson first time, I planned to let students write an essay after reading these materials. I wanted to check students impressions or opinions. However, I changed my mind. This chapter is really good for just fun reading. I just let them read these materials with fun. "Read for Fun".

Lesson4. Sports: More Than a Game

✓Chapter

<Sports: More Than a Game>

 

✓Topic

<Sports>

 

✓Lesson information

This lesson is related with sports. Naturally, the topic of this lesson comes to be sports. In this lesson, there are some real-episodes in the olympic games. These are quite touching episodes, but I think that these are not enough for reading sports materials. Also, it doesn't have any stimulating or reminding schema of students section.

 

✓What are these reading materials?

Therefore, I want to stimulate or building schema of sports to students. I prepared 4 reading materials. The first and second are related with olympic games. I will introduce ancient and modern olympic games. Our main text is related with olympic, so students can read easily and funny. The third and fourth are soccer reading material. One of the famous sports in the world is soccer that's why I chose these reading materials. The third one is brief information about soccer and the forth one is a text of the most famous soccer player in these days 'Lionel Messi'. With these two reading materials, students enjoy reading some texts of sports and expand their background knowledges and even common senses.
 

✓How can we use these reading materials?

Basically, I designed this chapter as an extensive reading. However, When I kept going on designing this lesson, I want to link my first two reading materials which are related with olympic games and the main text which is for olympic games also.

Therefore, after reading first two reading materials, I want to check my students opinion of olympic games. I will let them write something of olympic games. Any kind of writing is OK, for example, their impressions, watching olympic game episodes, cheerful messages to Korean athletes, or etc. It can not only stimulate and expand students' schema but also developing writing skills.
 

Procedures are here.

1. Read our main text of the textbook.

2. Read first and second reading materials.

<Ancient Olympic Games> and <Modern Olympic Games>

3. Remind those three reading materials and write something about 'Olympic Games'. You can write anything. For example, impressions of watching olympic games, watching olympic game episodes, cheerful messages to Korean athletes, or etc.

4. Share your ideas with your classmates.

 

Next two materials are related with soccer. I want students to read these materials for just getting information and fun. The combination of a most famous sport and a most famous player of that sport gives interest and fun to students.

 

Lesson 2. Let's Grab a Bite!

✓Chapter

<Let's Grab a Bite!>

 

✓Topic

<World Food>

 

✓Lesson information

This lesson is closely related with 'food'. As you can see from the title of the lesson, it introduces many different kinds of foods from different countries. However, because of the limited space of the textbook, it can't introduce many foods. Also, It can't show the representative food of the countries. Therefore, by adding further reading materials, I want to show 4 representative foods for each country.

 

✓What are these reading materials?

I chose 4 representative foods for Korea, USA, Japan, and Italia which are Pizza, Kimchi, Sushi, and Risotto. These reading materials have basic knowledge of those foods and these foods are quite famous, so students can just enjoy reading these texts. Almost every students know kimchi, but I want students to read some materials about kimchi because when they read a text which is related with something they already know, it is very helpful to develop their reading skills.

 

✓How can we use these reading materials?

As an English teacher, we can use these reading materials as a further reading class or an extensive reading class. The hidden meaning is I want to develop students' reading skills or strategies by using extensive reading. Normally, extensive reading is not good for developing reading skills or strategies. However, I think that when students read texts which are related with very familiar things, they can develop their reading skills or strategies unconsciously. So, by using these reading materials, I want to give both information and reading skills or strategies to my students.

 

 

Self-Acess Reading Resources for L2 readers

✓Textbook: High school English Ⅰ. (주) 두산동아

 

✓Target students: 1st grade in High school

 

✓Level: Intermediate to advanced

✓Category: Chapter-based & Topic-based

✓Approach: extensive reading

 

   When I was choosing reading materials, I concerned about the concept of extensive reading. In EFL context, especially in Korea English reading class, most of the students can't have many chances to read as many as possible they want. Therefore, I want show many and diverse reading materials to students. However, I can't disregard or skip students' textbook. I think choosing reading materials which are closely related with students' textbook is good for adding authenticity and intimacy. Also, it is quite good for their English studying. Because of these purposes, my reading materials are chosen by chapter-based. I chose all reading materials related with each chapter in the textbook. In other sides, each chapter has specific topic, so, I can say that it is topic-based. I want to introduce or show many other interesting information about that chapter. My reading materials are focused on the information or supplement, but, students can read them with fun and interest.

I chose 5 chapters in the textbook and I post them with 4 reading materials for each.

Also, I marked the topic of these chapters, so you can easily identify what chapter is and what topic of this chapter is.

 

Journal 2

·         Journal II (4/2) (5/2 for April Practicum students)

Discuss readings skills that you have learned in this class, but have rarely used in your reading. Do you think they are really necessary ones for better reading? Why or why not?

When I remind my English lesson from elementary school to university, especially in reading class, I always heard about the scanning. Even though I didn’t know that word when I was young, my English teachers in reading class usually let me use scanning skill. So at that time, I remembered that I used scanning skill a lot. However, as I grew up, I didn’t use that skill a lot. I knew that it’s very useful skill, but in middle and high school, to read the text and solve the questions as fast as possible was quite important. Because most of the reading classes in middle and high school were focused on the test, so managing the limited time was really important to most of the students. If we use scanning, we should read the text twice and at that time, I thought it is very ineffective way.

However, as I started studying several reading skills, I recognized scanning is very effective skill when I read certain text. There are many benefits of using scanning before reading text in earnest. First, I can stimulate my background knowledge or schema from scanning. Scanning first time, it gives me the main topic of text and a few important or frequent words. From that information, I can draw my schema and they are really helpful for my main reading. I can expect overall contents of the text.

Second, ironically, I can save the time for reading. As I mentioned above, I could expect overall contents or story of the text from scanning, so, if I don’t have much time, scanning saves my time. It is same as when I read the main text one more time. Because I already scanned the text, I could read the main text faster and also more accurately! It seems that I have two options for reading. The first one is only scanning when I don’t have much time. The second one is scanning and reading main text faster and more accurately. Clearly, these are very useful options.

Third, it gives me a way to think extensively. In other words, I can have a chance to extensive reading. It is quite related with schema. From schema I can think over the text and it is connected with extensive reading. As an English learner, to read extensively is important for improving language skill, especially reading skill. Therefore, scanning gives me a chance about improving another reading skill.

I mentioned many benefits about scanning, but, I think it cannot be used in every type of text. Basically, scanning is focused on drawing information from the text. Therefore, it is quite well fitted for informational text, explanation writing, or certain texts which are related with some information or peoples’ opinion. In these kinds of texts we can draw some information or stimulate our schema for using scanning. However, when we read novel or certain story, scanning could not be a useful way. Sequencing is very important matter for reading texts based on “story”. Of course, we could scan “story”, but, it is not effective way. From scanning we could know about the topic of the story and some information. However, I think the really important thing in “Story” is writer’s feeling or mind when they wrote this “story”. And, using scanning, we cannot find writer’s feeling or mind exactly. In other words, we just read only half of the story.

Therefore, except a novel or certain “story” based text, scanning is very useful skill in English reading. I don’t use it very frequently now, but I try to use it when I read some text. And, it gives me a lot of benefits. Scanning skill is really necessary for my better reading.

Journal 1 (2013.03.18)

Journal I (due 3/19): You need to post this journal on your blog and leave your blog address on your moodle profile.
Suppose your younger brother, nine year old, did not read in English yet, so your mother decided to send him to Hakwon. But 3 months later he ended up feeling that English was simply nightmare. He hated doing phonics workbook and memorizing words. He didn't want to go to Hakwon anymore. Your mother was now anxious and worried about her son. Your mother asked for your help. How would you help your brother enjoy reading in English?

  <Journal 1>

                                       20081894 Choi Jaehyuk

 

 This situation is quite hard to choose appropriate English reading material for him because he had already experienced failure in learning English well and he is still young, so his cognitive and affective factor don't grow fully yet. However, think in different way, it is very good chance for pulling him back to the amazing English world because he is still in critical period for learning second language and his less ripe cognitive and affective factor are still very flexible to get something from outside. In other words, he doesn't have thick and tall barrier yet.

When I study second language acquisition and teach English to students, I always think that motivation is the most important factor in learning English. In my case, as a student, when I lost my motivation in some subjects, my final grades were always poor. That kind of experience was activated commonly to my students, when I was a English teacher. Therefore, arousing motivation is the most important. So, in this situation, choosing very interesting or familiar reading material is the first thing to do. This kind of material would be helpful to rising motivation and interest of English again.

  Second, using various activities could be very useful. If the English class is focused on reading, learning vocabularies related with reading material is very important. So, vocabulary class is necessary. And, if we just start the vocabulary class in the same way described above situation, he might feel same nightmare. Therefore, it is not good way to just memorizing mechanically all of the words in reading materials. In stead of that way, we have to find various activities for vocabulary learning. For example, we can use "jeopardy game", "hangman game", or certain card games. This method is closely related with the first way I mentioned above, "motivation". Also, it is not limited to just vocabulary learning. Naturally, it could be applied to reading class. In summary, making all of the English class colorful is necessary.

  Third, we have to choose appropriate level of reading material which are including appropriate level of vocabularies, sentence structures, and grammatical features. No matter how interesting the topic of the class or a reading material is, if its level is not matched with him, he will feel frustrated again. Therefore, knowing the current exact English level of brother should be done first. Then, we should draw and plan our class matched with the level of young brother.