HUMANISTIC 3: Understanding Multiple Intellegence

We live among the people not just as a single identity. For instance, to parents I am their daughter who has to make them proud; being good kid or help them every day. To sisters I am the oldest who have to be their good model. To teachers I am their student who has to not being stupid. To lover probably you are his/her lover who should give them fun love-life. To school organization I am the leader who has to lead them. Those statuses are live inside us. Indisputable, in certain time, those statues can mix up and causes confusion or even problems. Moreover we live with other people who also have multiple identities.

Reflect to myself, I should not forget my identity as a Javanese when I live at Jakarta where many cultures are here. Hence, I often show my specific character as Javanese, which is medok (speak in strong java accent). My friends like to tease me, they repeat my words like what I said, and even they exaggerate it. To be honest, I sometimes hate it. It sounds like they mock at me. But, I ask to myself back then. I also like teasing my Sudanese friends by saying p when they misspell f.

We can’t deny it if we still like to judge and mock them by their look. We hardly see the other identities they have. It should not be like that, we should not see on one side.  Like maybe we can have different ethnic, but at least we are the same as Indonesian, or the same as Muslim, or the same as student. In certain way we are different, but in other way we are the same. So, I think respect is important in order to avoid hatred among others.

However before we respect others, we need to respect our own identities first. We have to be responsible to each identity we have and keep it balance. When one of our identity get problem, we have other identities that may help. For example, parents got angry with me because I don’t help them at home, but as a student I can show them that I can get the first rank. Then, my parents will not angry again to me. However, keep our identities balance is not easy. For some people maybe they find something harder than this. Personally, I never have a big problem of my identities, because I live in place where I also find many people with the same identities.

Thereby, we should stop judging people based on their one identity without looking them as a complex one. Then, if we already know it, we still suppose not to judge them. Rather than judge, it is worth it more when we can respect each other. Because, like what Harper Lee said in her book, To Kill a Mocking bird,  “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view--until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it”.

TLL Week 4 Part2: Technology to teach Writing

In this week, I also learned about technology to teach writing. I got it, that actualy we can enable technology in each skill of learning language. Also, there are many technology that provide writing learning. The most familiar and popular is blog. Before that, I want to give brief explanation about the role of writing in SLA.  According to Chen (2010), writing and reading has similar function which both of them share the same cognitive and social process. 
In writing, students learn how to interpreting and constructing meaning from text. There are many specific areas of writing, for instance academic writing or relfective writing. Thus, in writing there also four main focuses; form-focused approach, process-foccused approach, content-based approach, reader/audience-dominated approach. Good writing is depend on what focus we want to concern.


In form-focused approach, the famous techniques is drill and practice. In the internet, there are a lot website that provide excersice of drill and practice. For instance, ESL Blue, Guide to Grammar and Writing.


Process focussed Approach concern more on process and emphasize learned-centered task in which students feel free to control their own writing, how they write it, and evaluate it. Here students are allowed to have multiple drafts and do many editing until they feel their writing is good. Students can use computer and email to ask for revision to the teachers. 


Content-based Approach focus on contents. There are also many website that provide many collection of good lesson plan, such as encyclopedia.com. The last is reader/audience-dominated approach. It means that put all the focuse above to get greater attention to the readers.


There are some blogs that can make students enjoy writing in the internet. For example are blogspot, wordpress, tumblr,  and wigg. Each of them has different characteristics. Blogspot is the easiest blog to facilitate a new begginer of bloger. It’s because there are a lot of choices and we can use simple html code. We put it anything in simple way, just click and it will appears. I use blogspot since I was in junior high school. The setting is not complicated and it can look like a professional blog if we add some widget there.


Writing with technology is more fun rather than write by pencils. Because there also some correction if we misspelled some words. That’s all about my reflection in this week. Sayonaraaa~

TLL Week4: Technology to Teach Language!

Welcome to my fourth TLL reflection! 

This week we learned about some fun techonology to enable listening, speaking, reading and writing comprehension. As stated by Chen (2010), listening comprehension which precede speaking skill make the learners more familiar with the new language. Hence, if we want to focus on enhance our students’listening skill we should emphasize meaning rather than grammar itself. 

There are two approaches to teach listening skills, the natural approach and the total physical response (TPR).  Krashen and Terrel (2983) said that in natural approach, language production is supposed to be step by step from nonverbal responses to complex sentences. The content itself should meet the students’interest. We can search about interactive audio-picture lesson in the internet, there are many of them. The interesting one that we found this week was from british council. In TPR, teacher ask the students to listen only. While speaking the target language, teacher give illustration. Teacher also can give students command and they will respond it by physically doing the action. We can use TPR games, the students listen the words and point out which picture is suitable based on the listening. There are also some live action of TPR.

According to Chen (2010), to teach speaking skills for beginners we can use Audiolingualism, TPR, Natural Approach, silent way, and suggestopedia. While for more advanced level we can use communicative language teahing. SchMOOze university is interesing to use. It uses MOOs (Multi-user domain and Object Oriented)

From the example above, there are limitation which is every technology only concern in their basic field. For instance, schMOOze only help in speaking, no listening or writing there. However, there is a program named VoiceThread. It can enhance all of the skills; listening, speaking, writing, and reading. You can upload your documents, slides, presentations, pictures, videos, and voice. The most interesting is you also can comment it using five ways; typing, recording, video, pictures, and via telphone. VoiceThread is related to all skills so I think it’s evective because packaged in one time. However, if we want to use it we have to pay. That’s the limitation.

References:

Chen, C.F.E. “Computer Assisted Language Learning and Teaching” retrieved August 12 2010, from http://www2.nkfust.edu.tw/~emchen/CALL as in TLL Module