THE MIND GAME

DREAM CATCHERS are one of the most fascinating tradition of Native Americans. It was so fascinating that a famous thriller author wrote about it.


          DREAM CATCHER is a book by Stephen King, which years later is made into movie. I enjoy both version, I prefer the book, though. In this book, the author visualized the mind is like a library, our memories are like books they are stored in files and folders in orders. What is interesting about this storing management is that we can trace our memory. Our mind is a nature wonder. It can store millions and billions of data. And the capacity is unknown.
       

          I would like to underline the library part. I believe that we still in an worshiping books era. That's why we still need libraries to store them. Have you ever heard about Dewey Decimal System? It is a system used to categorize and find books easier. But we don't use that system in our mind. One thing I can suggest is mind mapping.

          Well, mind mapping has everything to do with our mind and drawing a map, of our mind ,of course. Tony Buzan has a wonderful way in teaching mind mapping and its usage, he even wrote mind mapping for kids. Picture on the left is one example of the most interesting ones. So, I suggest that we should apply content based learning. Start with something within the students' comfort zone, i.e. their hobbies, pets, favorite holiday destination, favorite movie or song or reading material. Just check out the link at the bottom of my post.


          Mind mapping is only one of many ways in improving vocabulary acquisition. non-native teachers like us can practice with this activity. The point is we have to know more and better even love the material we are teaching to ensure the students. Well, next post, I'm going to share about other thing. Thank you for reading my post. God speed.

With Love From Malang



http://www.giftediam.com/early-education/5-simple-ways-to-get-your-kids-started-with-mind-mapping

DIGESTING THE VOCABULARY

ECALLING THE QUESTION OF USING THE VOCABULARY SIZE TEST, IT IS PRETTY AWESOME. IN MY CLASS, MY STUDENTS LOVE IT! THOUGH THEY HAVE DIFFICULTY IN MOST OF THE PARTS, THEY ENJOY DOING IT, OF COURSE, AFTER THEY ARE TOLD ABOUT THE OBJECTIVES OF THE TEST.

     

o you know what objective did I tell them? I told them: having a test is the same with playing a game; we just repeating the same methodology that we already know but in a different platform. What is easy to guess when it comes to students? We know it well that they love to move, love playing, doing something "unimportant". What they think "unimportant" is actually just a lure that I design for them to be willingly involved in the learning process.

       

hen I asked them what their opinion would be if I gave them bilingual test, they said that would be a waste of time. So, based on the the response of 65% of total students, time allocation and arrangement at  school, and also government limitation, we conclude that a bilingual test won't be useful.

         

       

As for the sense of learning vocabulary itself, we can take a look at the picture on the left. Many wise people say that we can not put anything into a full bottle. As to people, we will not eat anything if we don't feel hungry or empty. First, we have to eat the food, chew it in our mouth, swallow it, sometimes we need water to moist our throat. Next, our digestion system will process it with the enzyme. After that our blood and O2 will carry useful nutrition and other things all over our body.

If we assume that the food here is vocabulary, chewing means observing (reading or listening or watching). Our mouth is like the eyes or ears or senses. Water is like the learning design which help them get the material or food. The digestion system is like the habit of the students in daily life. Having the food all over our body means that we can apply the vocabulary in everyday usage.
          

o, I have an idea! I would share with you about anything you want to ask about conducting a fun test and not losing our time too much on checking the test.

Feel free to contact me via this blog and I will help with open arms. Just remember one thing that our target language is English and English is a foreign language to most of our students. So, don't get tired reminding them every time we meet them, but do it in different ways. So that both of the students and the teachers won't get bored.

Learning Vocabulary is like having a beautiful pony.
Hard to get, difficult to tame but
worth to keep.

Week 1 December 2013

Good morning teachers,

Thank to those of you who posted their ideas on assessment in November. I could see that you not only wrote your ideas but also put an effort to provide comments of your colleagues’ writing. It was fantastic to see more people posted in November. It is also lovely to have more people who tried to catch up with other participants. It would be superb to hear from more of you in December. I am eager to see the rest of your posts and comments on the readings soon!

This December I have one of my supervisors posting for you all. Once you have written your own blog post, please read other posts on the topic and continue the discussion by adding comments, or even creating another blog post.

Please remember that your active participation in this blog will be used to issue a certificate of participation at the end of the study. You also go in the draw to win one of four autographed-books by Professor Paul Nation - a world-renowned TESOL scholar. The winner for November is Ibu Agnes Endah of SMAK Kolese Santo Yusuf Malang.

If you have any problems or questions, please do not hesitate to let me know!

Cheers,

Anik Wulyani

Averil Coxhead

Kia ora tatou/greetings to everyone

My name is Averil Coxhead and I am writing to you because I'm interested in vocabulary teaching and learning in your context.  I thought it might make an interesting discussion for your blogs.  I think vocabulary is one of the most important aspects of learning another language - you could say vocabulary is a passion of mine.

I have found a text about vocabulary and language education written by Professor Paul Nation - one of our professors here at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.  In this short article, he discusses learning and teaching vocabulary through different kinds of classroom tasks and from different approaches.  For your blogs, I would like you to read the article and comment on Nation's ideas and their connection to your classroom, your learners, and your context. For example, you might like to comment on the five principles he outlines later in the article, or you might like to discuss aspects of vocabulary such as fluency, learning through listening, and learner responsibility. Please visit this link: http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-nation/2006-Language-education-vocabulary.pdf

Another thing you could try is Nation's Vocabulary Size Test - take the 20,000 version on this link - http://my.vocabularysize.com/.  You could test your own vocabulary size and consider your results, and then perhaps test some of your students and see how they do. How useful is this vocabulary size test in your context?  Do you think a bilingual Indonesian/English vocabulary size test might be more useful?  Why/Why not? 

Best wishes and I look forward to your discussion.

Averil Coxhead