Week 8: Learning Contract

Day	Time	What I do?
Sunday	19.00	Learning contract
Monday	19.00-23.00	Writing inside the classroom
Tuesday	-
Wednesday	21.30	Reading skill
Thursday	-
Friday	22.30	Reading skill
Saturday	20.30	Listening skill

       I'm very sorry about my works because I had an accident on Monday 15 July, 2013. So, I couldn't do my work.

Inside the classroom

        Teacher told us to observe student’s behavior and teacher’s behavior when we are going to teaching observe about 2 weeks. This work is for writing proposal. It’s focus on English classroom. We should record the video about how teacher teach students in the classroom.

        He gave 8 topics for us and chooses 1 topic that we are interesting to do the research project that was 1.> lesson structure 2.> classroom management 3.> teaching strategies 4.> teacher uses material 5.> type of teaching 6.> teacher uses language 7.> students use language and 8.> students interaction. All of these are related to together. If teacher designs your classroom well, everything will be smoothing and have good effect.

        In century  English is very necessary in the world. Teacher should be the good model for students. The research project that we are interesting can improve your teaching to be better.

Week 7: Learning Contract

Day	Time	What I do?
Sunday	11.00	Learning contract
Monday	20.00-22.00	Writing inside the classroom
Tuesday	-
Wednesday	21.30	Reading skill
Thursday	-
Friday	20.30	Reading skill
Saturday	10.30	Listening skill

Listening skill

New Rules on Us Summer Jobs For Foreign Students

            More than 100 international students will spend this summer working and traveling in US. The idea is for students to work for up to 3 months and earn enough money to then spend a month traveling before they return home.

        That year there are some changes. The State Department said the students were put to work for long hours in jobs. More jobs will be banned in the fall. These include most construction, manufacturing, and food processing jobs. Someone said the change will protect foreign workers from getting injured on the job.

        New rules are being good for foreign students to work in safety place. They don’t work in long time.

Vocabulary	Pronunciation	Meaning		Sentence
		Thai	English
distribution <n.>	/ˌdɪstrɪˈbjuːʃn/	การกระจาย	the way that sth is shared or exists over a particular area or among a particular group of people	The map shows the distribution of this species across the world.
injured <v.>	/ ˈɪndʒəd /	ทำร้าย	physically hurt; having an injury	Carter is playing in place of the injured O'Reilly.

Reading skill

Motivating Students by Modifying Evaluation Methods

          A foreign language learner’s motivation can be influenced by many factors: social, psychological education, and economical. Teachers can do a lot to motivate their students by being observant, understanding, informed, and tactful.

          In the Chinese, this Confucian model has exerted a great influence on foreign language. Teacher is very demanding, responsible. The students are compared with each other. The sad thing from this model is that a teacher’s good will and extra effort frequently bring and negative and harmful effects on the students.

          When evaluating students’ performance, instead of looking at it with the critical eye of an authoritarian, the teacher should examine the way students have been successful. The brainstorming activity would be ruined and the benefits of focusing on success and achievements are manifold.

          Norm-referenced evaluation is like athletic competition in the prize winners are scare. Criterion-referenced evaluation measures a student’s performance by comparing it to a defined of knowledge or skills <Bachman 1990: 74-76>. The students are evaluated according to standards, not each other. Objectives-referenced evaluation works well with essays and should be an integral part of the everyday teaching process. Teachers should not unrealistic demands or judgment criteria for their students, but rather depend on objectives referencing to evaluate both their students’ performance and their own teaching. When teachers evaluate students’ performance, it should be done as one of several means to help students succeed in learning. Analytic assessment point out specific aspects of a students’ performance.

          Students have different tolerance because they differ from other students in such diverse aspects as their family, educational history, learning strategies, and attitude for foreign language learning <Eillis 1994>. These are 3 techniques for improving how we evaluate our students’ work:

1.     Diachronic evaluation.

2.     Split method.

3.     Dynamic view.

Learning a foreign language is a long and complex task. Students should encourage their selves  to learn. These are many methods to motivate them to learn well like focus on success and achievement, use objectives-referenced testing. I think it is useful for teachers to choose these methods to motivate students.

Vocabulary	Pronunciation	Meaning		Sentence
		Thai	English
tactful < adj.>	/ ˈtæktfl /	ระวังคำพูดไม่ให้กระทบผู้อื่น	careful not to say or do anything that will annoy or upset other people	That wasn't a very tactful thing to say! I tried to find a tactful way of telling her the truth.
prevail <v.>	/ prɪˈveɪl /	แพร่หลาย	to exist or be very common at a particular time or in a particular place	We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons.
begrudge<v.>	/ bɪˈɡrʌdʒ /	อิจฉา	to feel unhappy that sb has sth because you do not think that they deserve it	You surely don't begrudge him his happiness.
conceit < n.>	/ kənˈsiːt /		an artistic effect or device, especially one that is very clever or tries to be very clever but does not succeed	The ill-advised conceit of the guardian angel dooms the film from the start.
sluggish < adj.>	/ ˈslʌɡɪʃ /		moving, reacting or working more slowly than normal and in a way that seems lazy	He felt very heavy and sluggish after the meal.

Outside  the classroom: Reading skill                               

Using Letters to Tells Stories in the EFL classroom

Writing skill is important productive skill like speaking skill.When we write about something formal or informal, we should think of writing letters and writing process. When we write stories, they may be our personal life using our imagination, social experience and how to affect us. In addition, writing may be easy to understand, when we develop it within piece of writing. In this article, I will tell two ways how to use letters for telling stories with different students, beginner and advanced students. Using letters can develop English Language Learning. It is based on teaching English as Foreign Language (EFL) with authentic materials and communicative ability.  In this section, I will describe two activities exploring with secondary school students. The first activity is how to use writing letters for beginners. The second one is activity (epistolary story) for advanced students.

The first activity is how to use writing letters for beginners.Teachers can start a letter exchange in a class of beginner who is 11-12 years old in secondary school. The letter-writing activity can be part of lesson as the following: Class is focused on beginning EFL students. There are several materials used such as copies of a letter found in an EFL textbook, a small box, paper, and envelopes. In warm-up step, teachers photocopy letters of learners and tell them to introduce themselves. Students write their name in upper left-hand and address in the center of envelop like making from post office. During class, teachers ask students using letters in the modern world. After that, teachers give them copying of the letters and ask them some question. Let students see the letters’ structure and know how to use them. Teachers announce received letters to their students and allow students to find their delivery letters. Homework, teachers tell students to reply their letters. After the lesson, teachers can collect the letter and read it. Teachers ask the class to guess who the author is. The first activity is helpful students can write and read received letters.

The second one is activity (epistolary story) for advanced students. The target students are advanced. Materials are used: paper and time used about 1 month. During the lesson, each students write a letter to “Dear you.” The letters can include a true, assuming, or imaginary story. Each student signs their full name in the letter. After finished, teachers collect all the letters and give students the letters that are not theirs. Teachers ask students to reply the letters. In their response they need to ask, “What happened?” Each student has the letters relationship with another, and asks them to continue for a month. Everyone have exchanged like the stories wrapped. After the lesson, teachers give feedback students while they develop the stories through the letter exchange. In the second exchange, teachers organize them to work in small group and brainstorm to develop their story or ask them how the story may be finished. After finished story, let them edit their stories in small group and put all of them for the others read.

Conclusion, using the letters can help students how to make stories. According to two exercises, these activities help beginning student school aged 11-12 and advanced students. Using letters can enhance students to directly gain new experience for learning English to communicate their feel­ings, and emotions. In addition, the activities are related to writing skills for developing social interaction, constructionism, creative skill coupled with using imagination. Using the letters can help students understand how to make up the stories easily and be fun with game in the EFL classroom. In my opinion, both activities can be applied into larger projects or new units lead to spoken development.  If teachers ask students to present what they have written, describe the writing process and how the stories finished. The most important of these activities is focused on student-centred, allowing students truly create, write and edit their task to develop English as Foreign Language

Vocabulary	Pronunciation	Meaning
Engage (v)	/ɪnˈɡeɪdʒ/	ข้องเกี่ยว to succeed in attracting and keeping somebody's attention and interest Ex: Their pleas failed to engage any sympathy.
Envelope (n)	/ˈenvələʊp/	ซองจดหมาย a flat paper container used for sending letters in Ex: It might be a bit big but this envelope will do just fine. It's better to be too big than too small.
Personalize (v)	/ˈpɜːsənəlaɪz/	ทำให้เป็นส่วนบุคคล [usually passive] personalize something to mark something in some way to show that it belongs to a particular person Ex: All the towels were personalized with their initials.
Autobiography (n)	/ˌɔːtəbaɪˈɒɡrəfi/	อัตชีวประวัติ the story of a person's life, written by that person; this type of writing Ex: His autobiography was released today and was sold out by noon.
Permission (n)	/pəˈmɪʃn/	การอนุญาต the act of allowing somebody to do something, especially when this is done by somebody in a position of authority Ex: The school has been refused permission to expand.
Autonomous (adj.)	/ɔːˈtɒnəməs/	อิสระ able to do things and make decisions without help from anyone else Ex: Teachers aim to help children become autonomous learners.
Mainstream (n)	/ˈmeɪnstriːm/	หลักสำคัญ the ideas and opinions that are thought to be normal because they are shared by most people; the people whose ideas and opinions are most accepted Ex: He was never part of the literary mainstream as a writer.
Epistolary (adj.)	/ɪˈpɪstələri/	จดหมาย written or expressed in the form of letters Ex: What made you want to look up epistolary?
Illustrate (v)	/ˈɪləstreɪt/	แสดง to make the meaning of something clearer by using examples, pictures, etc Ex: Last year's sales figures are illustrated in Figure 2.

Reference:

Dario Luis Banegas.  Using Letters to Tell Stories in the EFL

               Classroom.  Assessed from:  americanenglish.state.gov/

                Files/ae/…/49_4_4_banegas.pdf (On July 20, 2013).