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.
