Reading !!!

Reading is a receptive written skill, because reading as comprehension is for understanding and what we read is not our ideas, which is as Goodman called a ‘psycholinguistic guessing game’, it’s a kind of interaction between the text and the reader, whose mind tries to get meanings from what he/she already has (linguistic knowledge/ background…) while reading to initiate a kind of dialogue with it.

This kind of conversation that leads the reader to make sense of a text can be categorized into two categories: the reader may be interested in contrasting a personal interpretation of a text, or he may be more interested in trying to get at the author’s original intentions.

Notably, the term ‘interaction’ refers to the interplay among various kinds of knowledge that a reader uses in reading a text, as they help the reader to decode the language of the text, but fluent readers reach automacity in their reading, and do not consciously control this process. And recent literature on reading, we have the term top-down processing to bring what we already know while reading carefully to understand the meaning of the text, and the term bottom-up processing in which we decode the letters, words, and other features in the text in order to build new knowledge and bring it to our heads. Therefore, our mission as teachers is to activate students’ prior knowledge, then let them read and relate it to the six types of reading knowledge to know their availability in the students, and be aware if they are happening together in their brains. reading as comprehension is for understanding.

Learning Language..

Learning a second language is different than any other subject, because our minds need to think and match what we are getting, with concrete things around it to get the right knowledge, and our brains will work in processing the input data to have more output for the language.

Krashen believed that we can give the child the input of a language, and leave him to be ready to use it by himself, while Dornyei disagreed in the Explicit versus Implicit knowledge debate and said that students need a push to use the language.

Dornyei argued that implicit (indirect) learning through natural acquisition is not enough to gain the correct knowledge of a language, and a student needs to get the language explicitly through direct formal education too.

Under this debate Swan says that language teaching doesn’t mean only teaching language, but also exposing the learner to the opportunity to use the language fluently and appropriately, since using the language is our target from learning it.

For Schmidt, ‘’noticing’’ is the process that transmits ‘’input’’ language to ‘’intake’’ through learning from the teacher and acquiring by the learner practicing, it is the process that makes from quantity of gained knowledge an infinite knowledge to be used.

Course books or authentic materials ?!

For many teachers, what and how to teach is based on the course book and its syllabus that most of the time is chosen by the institution they work for, which is beneficial for the novice teachers to make them confident through using carefully prepared books that provide a balanced chronological presentation of information which is accompanied most of the time with variety of resources that would save the teacher’s time and energy in thinking, searching and preparing , those teachers sometimes use alternatives to the text book ,that they consider it trusted and prepared in a satisfactory language control, but to follow the allocated syllabus and procedures.

But relying on text books may stifle the teacher’s creativity through books that are structured in a specific way to impose a learning style that may not suit all students. Adding that text books are often bland, to avoid any possible offence and to be acceptable in many different contexts, where these contexts may not be in the best interests and needs of the students.

On the other hand, using authentic materials in teaching provides the teacher with more opportunities to choose and create from all the components of language that can be dealt with and suit all learning styles. Moreover, well-chosen and prepared authentic materials generate more students’ involvement and motivate learners to communicate through real topics that prepare them for real world communication.

However, teaching through authentic materials needs time and effort from the teacher to make it coherent, balanced, and organized with the curriculum standards, as well as suitable for the students’ age, ability, learning style, and social mentality. Because some authentic materials may contain a language that we don’t want to teach, or even they may contain some language errors, without forgetting that the majority of them are copyrighted and we should take that into consideration if we want to use them.

As a teacher, I believe that the balance that results from the students’ interests and needs is always the key beyond the correct choice between books and authentic materials, where the teacher should know when the text book is enough and serves the needs of her lesson objectives and when getting trusted, well-tested authentic materials give better results in achieving her goal.

This balance can occur also through interacting both in the same lesson, as the teacher can explain the text in the book and provide activities based on authentic materials, or giving an authentic material as an introduction for the lesson.

Teachers would master the correct choice better after building a rich repertoire of experiences that allows her to match what is best for every class, lesson, and students, to enrich the learners learning experience in a real authentic but professional accurate manner.

Significantly, knowing what to choose is not always easy, since it’s mostly dependent on the learners themselves, where the learners also are affected by many factors that lead to totally different individuals in the same teaching process.

Teaching Unplugged !!!

As a result of the communicative language teaching revolution, teaching unplugged philosophy existed .This philosophy, asThornbury suggested, asks us to return to a materials and technology-free classrooms in which dialogues can take place. And this is what Thornbury called teaching ‘Dogme’, which means going back to the roots of teaching methods and include interactive talks between students, and students with their teacher, by working on the learners’ language and using benefits from his errors rather than following a prescribed syllabus or pre-packed materials such as course books.

But from my perspective, teaching totally unplugged, and returning to a material and technology free class rooms won’t be effective in our century where using technology can help and make ideas clearer at some points, and we might use it as a kind of changing from time to time.

However, focusing on technology and leaving the main goal after using it in helping to deliver the knowledge will absolutely kill the interaction and communication in our classrooms; that’s why it should be used as tool when it’s beneficial to the objectives of the lesson; where balance in knowing when to use what; is always needed.

Communicative classrooms

If our goal is the communicative language ability, then practicing communitive tasks is the path to reach this goal, and in this domain ‘Brumfit’ listed a set of criteria for achieving communication’s fluency, as that the focus in those activities should be on the meaning and not the form because using the language is the tool that will lead for communication, and the used language should be relevant to the students’ needs to give them the chance to produce ideas, information, and opinions.

Brumfit also argued that students should not be reliant on the teacher or the material of the language, but they should have a space for negotiations, predictions (opinion gap), and the use of the four learning skills, as the teacher’s role, should be minimal to save the communication from being blocked.

Prabhu, on his turn gave a useful typology of activities that are based on how to create a gap of information or opinion to open a normal discourse, like the information gap activity which involves the transfer of information from one person to another; it is a give and take instruction to build a full image of the topic.

Also, there is the reasoning gap activity and the opinion gap activity, where the first involves deriving new information from the data that we already have through analyzing and discussing, while the second identifies and articulates a personal preference, feeling, or attitude in a response to a given situation through discussions and debates.

On the other hand, Skehan pointed that time pressure plays a great emphasis to force students to communicate without paying much attention to the completeness of the language form because they need to finish the task quickly. Therefore, they may use the lexical phrases to express ideas instead of building sentences from isolated vocabulary and worrying about the correct structure of the sentence.

Having said all above, leads us to a dangerous fact of developing the ‘undesirable fluency’ by using incorrect forms in communications, which students may use in other tasks.Thus, we need to help students to become more accurate too, by giving them the chance to prepare the content of what they are going to say and focus on the correct expression, or giving them the opportunity to record the communicative task and focus on the form in it after finishing it, or even the teacher can rewrites students text by following the ideas closely but improving the language to the students, to compare her work to there’s and use a cycle of preparatory with follow-up tasks as in the PPP theory to create a balance between accuracy and fluency activities.

Language in early ages

Language is an essential component in our everyday life and we use it for many purposes, and the main purpose is for communication to express ideas, thoughts, opinions, and ask for our needs.

Teaching language starts from the very early ages even though we are unconscious that we are teaching it in many of our talks and behaviors.

But we need to be more aware of better ways in which children become effective speakers, listeners, readers, and writers, because of the essential role of language of teaching language as a system of symbols by which we categorize, organize, and clarify our thinking that enables children to acquire the oral language and use it effectively in a variety of settings as well.

Children’s communicative competencies involve receptive language that refers to the child’s comprehension of words, and expressive language that develops during social interactions.

When children are acquiring language, they are developing five aspects of language knowledge that refers to a specific domain of language knowledge,(Phonetic knowledge, Semantic knowledge,Syntactic knowledge, Morphemic knowledge, and Pragmatic knowledge),but do not isolation from each other.

Furthermore, these five aspects of language can be categorized into three levels: linguistic that represents the usage level of the language, metalinguistic level when children become more aware of the five aspects of language knowledge and can consciously manipulate and reflect on features of language, and metalinguistic verbalization is the most conscious and complex level of language knowledge and occurs when children begin to verbalize their metalinguistic knowledge.

Education and culture differences

The relation between education, beliefs, actions, and society is intertwined, as no one can neglect how our education affects our personality, thinking, and behavior that are all together the building blocks of our character, and the building of all the characters in a place is the building of its society. However, different cultures will have different philosophies, which results in different ways of doing things, especially in educating the next generations, and education is the reason after the pupil’s mentality for seeking change in their societies, or trying to maintain the good old days.

But the question that proposes itself here is; should education strive for changing society? Or should it try to maintain our social life and cultural norms?

Education system in the East and West is different due to their different culture, and indirectly shows the strength and weaknesses of both cultures (Kim, 2005). By reviewing on both philosophies, each has its own root, principle and the approach in developing and producing the qualified and superior society. This due to the role of knowledge that does not only functions to provide the explanation and information, but the most important is the knowledge that emerges as the medium in influencing, developing, and also shaping the notion of human and the society itself. (Aminuddin Hassan and Nur Syuhada Jamaludin,2014)

Comparing the two societies, we can realize that Easterners prefer stability and normally obtain the knowledge directly from their teachings of religion, such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Hinduism. And what people prefer affects the philosophy of education that they follow in it. Adding that religion and philosophy are greatly connected and affecting person’s life in all aspects of the Eastern life that in turn affects the philosophy of education which is a way to think about the process of learning in all its perspectives and angles.

Importance of education

      

Education as defined by dictionaries is the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.

Education is a process of inviting truth and possibility, of encouraging and giving time to discovery. It is, as John Dewey (1916) defined, ‘a process of living and not a preparation for future living’. It is where educators look to act with people rather on them. (Mark K Smith, 2015)

In reality, education is not schooling, education is the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning anywhere in anytime, undertaken in the belief that all should have the chance to share in life because we are the ones who make life.

Indeed, we are the life, and how we are educated is the way we think toward everyone and everything in the world, and how we think leads our actions in life which in turn affects the changing or stability of all the aspects of the world around us. And because we are human who are characterized as social beings; our first concern must be how our education is affecting our social life, and how our social life, which is based on our beliefs as a full society, is reflected in our philosophies of education.

Education and course books

Education is a basic human right and a significant factor in the development of children, communities, and countries. Opening classroom doors to all children will help break the intergenerational chains of poverty because education is intrinsically linked to all development goals, such as supporting gender empowerment, improving child health and maternal health, reducing hunger, fighting the spread of diseases of poverty, spurring economic growth, building peace, and gaining knowledge from anywhere in the world that became a global village. To gain the international knowledge we need international language, and today everyone recognizes the importance of learning the English language. More people around the world than ever before are studying and learning English because it has become the international language of education, technology, and business, and the ability to speak and write English properly allows people to advance in the professional world. Being able to speak in English also widens one’s horizon in communicating globally, as well as, knowing English will allow us to access to an incredible amount of information which may not be otherwise available. All those who are concerned with teaching and learning English have always expressed their complaints about weakness in the students’ performance. Such complaints are in need of research so as to pinpoint the problems behind teaching and learning English in our schools and finding solutions for these problems. (Khalil and Kattan, 1994).

Course books are a core part of any curriculum as the unique contributors to content learning. They are the most commonly used course materials in transmitting knowledge and skills, and in order to teach English fluently and accurately we seek good textbooks that need to have the following features and functions:

1)      Layout, design and ease to use: what does the course book look like and how it is easy to find your way around it; especially for young learners.

2)      Instructions: it is worthy to have instructions/ rubrics for the given exercises throughout the book.

3)      Methodology: what kind of teaching and learning the material provokes- the methods, techniques and procedures it suggests.

4)      Syllabus: it should agree with the selected language that the students need to learn and the amount of time given for the different language skills, based on the core standards we are following and taking into consideration if it is balanced and appropriate for the students and the given course.

5)      Topics (and content): it should contain a realistic, engaging topics and content. Adding that the material should be culturally appropriate for our learners.

6)      Teacher’s guides and teacher support: the course book needs to have a good clear teacher’s guide to accompany it, especially for novice teachers to help them in deciding their selections through the teaching process.

12 Keys to High-Quality Early Childhood Inclusio

 Kathryn Wahl, director of the Santa Clara County Office of Education's Inclusion Collaborative Department.

It is a topic that explains the meaning of inclusion as an attitude and philosophy that promotes a sense of belonging, community and membership.

It values differences and diversity, builds positive social relationships and friendships, and promotes reaching full developmental and learning potential.

Inclusive program benefits all children, parents, teachers, and communities.

Inclusion has its benefits for children with disabilities to be seen as a child first and a special need second, where they can observe and imitate other children, become independent and self-reliant, build a self-concept, and learn appropriate social skills.

As well as inclusion has its benefits for children without disabilities too.

They learn to accept and become comfortable with individual differences, increase their self-esteem through helping others, explore new ways of being a friend, and gain new awareness of ability to express caring, concern, and compassion.

Adding that it has its benefits for adults in the classroom ( teachers and assistants), as broadening teaching and personal experience, expanding techniques for individualizing activities, helping prepare all children for future experience in their community, and increase opportunities to encourage acceptance and individual differences.

The webinar also discussed the 12 areas of inclusive practice (ICP):

Adaptations of Space, Materials, and Equipment. Adult Involvement in Peer Interactions. Adults’ Guidance of Children’s Free-Choice Activities and Play. Conflict Resolution. Membership. Relationships between Adults and Children. Support for Communication. Adaptation of Group Activities. Transitions between Activities. Feedback. Family-Professional Partnerships. Monitoring Children’s Learning.