WEEK 2

Last week, we talked about the role of the teacher in speaking class. I
learned that the teacher should be prompter; T gives some discrete suggestion
when Ss can not think of what to say. She should be participant. Ts’ participant
in in role plays or speaking activities may help the activity go along. However, T
should not be dominant or do the whole activity. Moreover, she should be
feedback provider. . It doesn’t mean correcting all the mistakes. Ts should give
delayed feedback or immediate feedback depending on the task type. T may
encourage self or peer correction.

Today, Gülşen hoca presented some speaking activities. There was an

activity I did not like. In that acitivity, T chooses a student to come to the
board an describe a picture. The rest of the Ss try to draw it. I did not like it
because Ss did not participate in activity equally. Only the S who described
picture spoke, but the others did not. Moreover, maybe some Ss may not like
drawing. During the activity, T just sat and she did not check what was going on.
She did not observce what was happening and she did not giving feedback. She
did not use any kind of pre-actvity or any warming-up activity. Her instruction
was not clear. So it was not o good speaking activity.

On the other hand, Gülşen hoca showed us another acitivity. In that one,
she started by showing some pictures. Then she asked questions about the
pictures. The pictures were related to creatures such as dinsaurs, monsters :D.
Then she talked about questions for descriptions such as; ‘ what does it look
like’, “ What shape ……..?” , “ What color ……..” etc. And she also talked about
word/ phrases for descriptions such as; gren colored, big headed, five legged
etc. After that she passed to the speaking activity. Firstly, she asked who likes
drawing. Six students raised their arms. Then she divided class into groups of 4
or 5. there were six groups. She distrubuted those 6 students who wanted to
draw to the each group. After that, she gave some role cards to each S in
groups. The S who likes drawing was a journalist. The rest of them local people
who claimed to saw the Van lake monster. The journalist went to Van to
interview with those people. Journalist asked questions about monster by using
the questions for descriptions that they talked before. The local ones who saw
the monster described the part of monster body (tail.leg, head, arm etc.) by
using word/ phrases for descriptions. The journalist tried to draw the monster
according to descriptions of local people. After finishing drawing, Gülşen hoca
hung up those drawing to the board, so we saw other groups’ drawings. Lastly,she
gave a homework. As a homework, Ss will ask some people whether they heard
any monster story or not. According to answers Ss will write a short paragraph.
That speaking activity was really a good one because T used a pre-activity to
elicit the topic. Speaking activity was related to the topic and it had a fuction
( to use questions for descriptions and word/phrases for descriptions). Ss
participated in it equally. The role cards were prepared well, they had all
informations Ss need. Moreover, T gave a homework as a post activity to
practice the fuction and improve writing. It was totally a good speaking activity
and I suppose I will use it in my class in the future.