Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL Mokpo Outreach Special Workshops

Gwangju-Jeonnam KOTESOL April Outreach

Time:  Saturday, April 30, 2016, 1:00 p.m.
Place:  Mokpo National University (Muan, Jeonnam), Bldg. A10, Rm. 204 & 205
Directions to Venue: http://koreatesol.org/content/directions-mokpomuan-outreach
Google Map

——  Workshop Presentations ——

1:30 pm [Rm 204]: Collaborative Graph-Making Tasks for Language Learning
— Jocelyn Wright (Mokpo National University, Muan)

1:30 pm [Rm 205]: Story Writing as a Path to Academic Writing
— Bryan Hale (Sunkyeong Academy, Gwangju)

2:15–2:45 —— Networking and Refreshments ——

2:45 pm [Rm 204]: Beyond the Four Walls: Using Images in EFL Classrooms
— Jessica Magnusson (Gwangju National University of Education)

2:45 pm [Rm 205]: Polishing the Plan: Anticipating Problems to Help Students Shine
— Lindsay Herron (Gwangju National University of Education)

3:40 pm [Rm 204]: 4/3/2: Developing Fluency in the Classroom
— Jessica Ives (Dongshin University, Naju)

3:40 pm [Rm 205]: Grabbing Your Class's Attention
— Seongsuk Yun (Ojeong English Center, Gwangju)

——  Workshop Timetable  ——

>>> Schedule available in PDF format at bottom of page.
 

Presentation Abstracts and Presenter Biographical Sketches
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Collaborative Graph-Making Tasks for Language Learning

Jocelyn Wright

Increasingly these days, we are encouraged to teach so-called “21st century skills” in our classrooms. Among these, English and statistical literacy are both globally important. As such, it makes sense to seek out ways to combine them in our lessons.

Many language teachers already use various kinds of diagrams, tables, charts, and graphic organizers for language teaching or learning. You have probably done so as well. But have you used quantitative graphs and charts? One fun way to incorporate these into teaching is to do collaborative, graph-making tasks.

Graph-making is different from simply graph-reading, which is most common if at all done in English language classes. While graph-reading focuses on comprehension and description, graph-making possibly involves planning, collecting, analyzing, interpreting, and presenting data. This process provides multiple and valuable opportunities to use a wide range of language and various integrated skills.

You likely remember the three main types of quantitative graphs (i.e., pie, bar, and line) from your school days. If so, you may recall that each has distinct characteristics. While tasks do not have to limit language use, certain language forms lend themselves better to particular types of graph-making tasks.

After a brief overview of the types of graphs, we will do a few tasks that illustrate procedures, uses, and variations for each one. These should lead us to deduce motivations for using quantitative graphs as tasks for language learning and to consider aspects such as learner configurations, task sequencing, data collection, focus on meaning, focus on form, skills development, task design, and available resources (digital as well as print). Finally, to encourage materials design, we will finish by brainstorming further applications suitable for our particular classrooms for each type of graph.

By the end of this workshop, it is hoped that you will see how incorporating quantitative graph-making into your lessons has transformative potential because ordinary exercises can be redesigned into collaborative, interdisciplinary, task-based learning opportunities that are engaging, meaning-focused, reflective of real-world activity, and outcome-oriented.

^{This presentation is based on an article published by the presenter last year in a UK teaching magazine. Reference: Wright, J. (2015). Graphs and charts. English Teaching Professional, 101(November), pp. 17-21.}

The Presenter
  Jocelyn Wright is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Mokpo National University, the venue hosting the April 30 Chapter Outreach. She has been teaching in Korea at the university level for over seven years and has been actively involved in KOTESOL for just as long. She has also taught in French-Canada, the Dominican Republic, and France. Her many interests include task-based teaching and materials development.

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Story Writing as a Path to Academic Writing

Bryan Hale

Writing can be a frustrating exercise in English language classes, for students and for teachers. Students might not be very personally invested, even if teachers have encouraged them to write about topics that interest them and to write with a personal voice. Different cultural approaches to writing and rhetoric can lead to miscommunication rather than illuminating exchanges. It’s easy for students and teachers to retreat into “just because”: “But teacher, there’s nothing more to write. The reason is, just because!” “You have to explain this more, the way I’m telling you to explain it more, just because!”

Story writing can offer an alternative and maybe more productive path into academic writing. Story writing can help students to experience a sense of ownership of their writing and to be more engaged with the content of their writing. Story writing can help students to think consciously about structure and how to build cohesive, coherent texts in English. Story writing offers lots of opportunities for purposeful and creative revision. And story writing can encourage more authentic negotiation and exchange between students and teachers.

In this workshop, we will try some creative writing activities that I have found useful with students in the higher elementary-school grades, middle school, and up. Together, we will write some (little) stories ourselves and also think about what students might make of the processes we try, and how these writing processes might build towards more academic writing. Participants will have an opportunity to reflect on the purposes of teaching writing in English language classes, and to get some activity ideas to use in class.

The Presenter
  Bryan Hale is a teacher from Australia who has been in Korea since 2011. Bryan currently teaches conversation and writing to elementary and middle school students at Sunkyung Academy in Gwangju. He has experience teaching students in Korea of all ages, from very young to adult. Email: bryan.english.teacher@gmail.com

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Beyond the Four Walls: Using Images in EFL Classrooms

Jessica Magnusson

People have been lead to believe that learning is something that occurs mostly as a result of activity in the brain. However, learning is a full-body experience with information being constantly taken in through the senses.  Some researchers have found that for many people 75-90% of learning comes about as a result of visual input. This presentation will look into what those numbers actually mean and delve a little bit into the science of how learning can be tied to visual input.
 
There are many textbooks and teaching materials for learning English that are devoid of images (photos, videos, illustrations, paintings, comics, etc.). There is also an erroneous belief, reiterated enough to be a concern, that having too many images in teaching materials or in lessons “isn’t academic enough.” By separating language and images, we are in fact asking students to learn English in a more difficult way than they learned their native language. When people learn their native language, this learning is supported both by direct experience and rich contexts with images that illustrate every shade and nuance of meaning. Images come from televisions, computers, books, advertising, and nearly everything that surrounds us. Through using images, EFL instructors can provide rich contexts to support learning.  

Images enhance the learning experience in many ways. They arouse curiosity, aid retention, and enhance understanding. Since there is only so much that can be experienced in a classroom setting, images are what can take us beyond the four walls of the classroom. This presentation illustrates the importance of using images in the EFL (or in any other) classroom and compares teaching materials with images to those without. The presenter will speak about her experience using images in EFL classes and the responses she has noticed from students.   

Images displayed digitally are reusable. Once teachers have found an image that adequately introduces a topic, vocabulary item, or language point, that image can be brought up again for use in subsequent lessons in months or even years to come.  Images also serve as an excellent tool for reviewing vocabulary and language points and refreshing students’ memories. Image search engines and other teaching resources for finding and using images will be introduced. Five activities for using images in the classroom will be demonstrated during this presentation. Participants will try out the activities and discuss their experiences.

The Presenter
  Jessica Magnusson earned a Master of TESOL from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont, USA.  She has taught general English courses, graduate school courses, teacher training courses, children’s English courses, and special programs for Gwangju National University of Education since 2011.  She has also taught at DongNam Health University in Suwon for 3 years. Prior to coming to Korea, she taught for four years in China. Her interests include hiking and foreign language studies.

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Polishing the Plan: Anticipating Problems to Help Students Shine

Lindsay Herron

Many teachers include anticipated problems and solutions in their lesson plans—or at least consider, as they work out the lesson procedure, what might go wrong. But are you going beyond the superficial to diagnose exactly why a lesson or activity might flop? This workshop will suggest several ways to analyze a lesson plan’s potential pitfalls, from the overall class experience to the minutiae involved in the tasks, themselves.

From an overall perspective, there are a wide variety of possible problems to consider, from equipment malfunctions (e.g., the computer might not work, so the PowerPoint game you’ve slaved over might be rendered useless!) and organizational issues (e.g., there might be an odd number of learners, but you’re planning a pair work activity) to linguistic problems (e.g., students might already know gonna but don’t understand that it includes two words, going and to) and individual problems (e.g., one particular student tends to answer every question).

When considering problems students might encounter when doing a particular activity, it’s also useful to take into account different types of task demand. We’ll look specifically at six types of task demand: cognitive (for example, graphical representations and cultural schema), language (including pronunciation and grammar), interactional (issues related to pair work, group work, etc.), metalinguistic (related to the technical terms used to describe language), involvement (student interest level), and physical (motor skills, sitting still for a long time, etc.). There are certain steps every teacher can take to help students as they undertake each task; we’ll brainstorm possible support steps for each type of task demand.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be eager to take a closer look at their own lessons, identify potential problem areas, and prepare solutions and supports, ultimately crafting a more balanced, effective, and engaging class for all.

^{Note: A more extensive version of this workshop (called “Lesson Planning 201: Beyond the Basics”) was presented at the November 2015 Gwangju Chapter workshop.}

The Presenter
  Lindsay Herron has been a visiting professor at Gwangju National University of Education in Gwangju since 2008. Prior to that, she taught English on a Fulbright grant at a boys’ high school in Jeju-do. She has a master’s degree in language education from Indiana University-Bloomington, a master’s in cinema studies from New York University, bachelor’s degrees in English and psychology from Swarthmore College, a CELTA, and the CELTA YL Extension. She is the treasurer of the Gwangju-Jeonnam Chapter and the current national president of Korea TESOL.

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4/3/2: Developing Fluency in the Classroom

Jessica Ives

In the language learning classroom, fluency is a skill that can sometimes be overlooked. This could be due to the difficulty in creating activities that develop fluency. As explained by Paul Nation (1989), “Fluency involves the speed and flow of language production, the degree of control of language items, and the way language and content interact” (p. 377). In order to facilitate the development of fluency, activities in which the learner's focus is shifted away from language forms and onto the message that is being communicated can be incorporated into the classroom. Or as Brumfit (1984) explains, language work that entails using the target language as if it is the mother tongue is always fluency work. Therefore, the overall purpose of fluency-building activities is to allow the learner to negotiate with previously learned language “chunks.” These chunks are then made more easily accessible because the activity focuses on communicating the message.

One activity that can help in fluency building is the 4/3/2 technique. For this technique, as Nation (1989) describes, the learner talks on the same topic three times; however, each consecutive time is constrained by a decreased time limit. In this workshop, the presenter will further explain the 4/3/2 technique; in addition, the benefits for learners will also be outlined. Next, the presenter will demonstrate one way this technique can be used in the classroom. For the last segment, participants will brainstorm various ways that this technique can be incorporated into their teaching contexts. By the end of the presentation, I hope teachers will be more aware of the importance of fluency and take with them a new fluency-building activity to use in their classroom.      

^{References
Brumfit, C. J. (1984). Communicative methodology in language teaching: The roles of fluency and accuracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. (1989). Improving speaking fluency. System, 17(3), 377–384.}

The Presenter
  Jessica Ives is from Niagara Falls, Canada. This is her second year teaching as a professor at Dongshin University in Naju. Before teaching in Korea, she was an ESL Instructor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. She completed both her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) and Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics (TESL) at Brock University. She is interested in Reflective Practice and the sociolinguistic aspects of language teaching.

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Grabbing the Class's Attention

Seongsuk Yun

The secret to an effective lesson is to grab the class's attention at the beginning of the class. If the teacher fails to pique the class's interest within the first three to five minutes of the class period, it will be much harder to acquire it further into the lesson. This presentation introduces a set of seven tried-and-proved tips for capturing the students’ attention. These techniques are simple yet powerful.

Using choral chants. Here is one example: the teacher says “Are you ready?” Students respond “Yes, I’m ready.” The teacher next says “Are you really ready?” and the students say “Yes, I’m really ready.” The teacher can create variation by adding words or repeating in an unique way to hold the students attention in preparation for the lesson.

Changing one's voice. By changing the loudness or softness of one’s voice or the tone, students become more attentive. Surprisingly, a very soft voice grabs strong attention, as does just moving one’s lips. Changing the tone of the voice in the appropriate context is also very effective.

Using musical “instruments.” Teachers can use almost anything around them as an instrument. Creativity is the important thing: the table, water bottles, empty containers can all be used. The teacher should be resourceful, creative enough to use unique things as musical instruments. The teacher’s desk, laps, nut containers, and even the teacher’s voice can serve as an interesting musical attention-grabber.

Creating movement. Having the students move their bodies through simple activities (or start the class in a very quiet way with the no-voice activity) is very effective. Students love to move their bodies, so if the teacher can give them chances to do so at the beginning of class they will naturally become engaged and have fun.

Drawing or writing something on the board. Awakening students’ interest by drawing something that is related to the day’s lesson can serve as a motivator. Messages to students with missing letters can serve as a way of introducing the lesson.

Using simple visual aids. Bringing interesting or unusual items into the classroom can be used as attention-getters and conversation-starters. Puppets can be used to build conversations. Visual aids can be used to provide hints to answer teacher’s questions.

Using technology for visuals. For example, the teacher can use applications or movie-making tools to make short video clips and other materials. With Chatter Pix, you can make any photo come alive, and with Windows Movie Maker, you can turn students into actors.

These seven attention-grabbing techniques are based on the presenter's experience with young learners. However, many of them can also be used quite effectively with middle school classes or even university freshman English classes with little or no adaptation necessary.

The Presenter
  Seongsuk Yun is Team Leader of the Ojeong English Center, one of only four government-funded English centers in Gwangju. She is a graduate of Gwangju National University of Education and has taught at the elementary school level for seven years as a homeroom teacher and for another six years as an English subject teacher. Ms. Yun was selected by the Office of Education for an intensive teacher-training program at Powell College in the United States. Most recently, she has become a lifetime member of Korea TESOL.