AMNESTY CANADA - INCULCATING GLOBAL SENSE IN ELS CLASSROOM - After a while we haven't taken the proper time to ponder about what's happening around the world. As I surfed through http://www.amnesty.ca/ I couldn't believe what sort of blindfolded life I have been living in... Though it is a noble classroom practice, I believe the execution of this activity requires attentive facilitating from the teacher especially in a classroom of primary and lower secondary with limited repertoire. Why? Because issues which are brought in the website are very critical, and therefore, I believe it is much better for the teacher to set a specific parameter or topic so that the discussion is more focused and controlled. In this way, the students will engage more if the teacher perhaps make the excerpt more comprehensible and related to them in a way. For instance; taking up a text from a newspaper article discussing on the issue of Teenage Pregnancy. The students can perhaps generalize this issue from a specific parameter into their own hence opening up more ideas of what to write, for instance; an argumentative essay or a comparison and contrast essay or maybe what we did in the class (write email to an authorized official). The adaptability of this activity ranges from secondary school students and above because it requires more criticality compared to creativity.
RELAY WRITING: A CREATIVE APPROACH TOWARDS BETTER WRITING In change of discourse, reviewing the second classroom activity which is Relay Writing, I can conclude that it really triggers a range of prospects in writing skills of the students. In this activity students are kin to engage with their groupmates which is an effective way of establishing authenticity in a lesson; meaning that the students get to interact genuinely among themselves (peer learning), provided authentic tasks where they have to think critically and creatively on how to synthesize the fragment of ideas from their friends and create a complete interesting discourse of their own. I think this activity is very enjoyable and really enhances ELS learning in a holistic sense. Students can interact with one another; improve on their grammaticality upon comparing their works; enriching their vocabulary and adding more entertaining experience in writing using the English language. This activity is also compatible with students across levels of education; primary, lower secondary, upper secondary, and so on.
Muhammad Asyraf bin Shuib
167487
Faculty Of Educational Studies
LHE3220 Computer Application in TESL
University Putra Malaysia
Dr Abu Bakar
Hello Asyraf,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments on both of the activities that we did in the lab session a few days ago. I agree with you that the amnesty email writing activity is a more serious approach to teaching English (writing), and that the teacher needs to give more commitment in terms of carefully choosing the topics of discussion/activity. That is why I am exposing you and your classmates to these websites, so that you can explore them on your own and critically think on them in terms of their use(s) in the English classroom.
On another note, I am glad that you really liked the writing relay activity. Indeed this activity is much more fun and can be adapted to various levels of students.
However, you should not let that stop you from using these two types activities the ways we did in class. What I mean is, I think you can also use the amnesty website to do some fun activities (e.g., writing emails, poems, or come up with a video clip to support the victims); and the writing relay activity to do a more serious activity (e.g., persuasive/argumentative writing or even an online debate).
Selamat hari raya haji!
AB