4th Week

It is our fourth week in Resources class and I walk into the class with full of confidence and curiosity thinking on what are we going to learn today? The moment Pn. Foziah entered the class she told us that she wants to introduce ‘something’ that we will be doing till the end of this course. ‘SOMETHING’, I’m curious to know what new thing is that and I’m very sure the ‘new thing’ that Pn. Foziah wants to introduce will be very useful for our profession in future. But before she proceeds further regarding the ‘new thing’, she asked the other four groups to carry out their presentation for last week’s slot.

The first group presented on “working with young language learners”. There was a significant sentence said by one of the group members; “children are not born with a blank slate”, and this is very true. When we teach the pupils especially the year 1 pupils, we should not assume that they do not know anything. We should realize that children are biologically programmed for language. When we talk to children, they are able to respond to us although they do not really understand all the words in the sentence. So how this happens? This is based on our facial expression, gestures, intonation and rhythm that enable the children to understand what we mean. For instance, when the teacher tells the pupils a story which consist of low frequency words, the teacher can flash out the picture of those words. Thus, we can see here that teachers play an important role in helping the pupils to understand the story and indirectly developing their language proficiency.

The second group presented on/ the topic “Children’s instinct for play and fun”. We should realize that children could not be separated with fun and games because both of it are fundamental for healthy development of an individual. Songs, drama and art projects are some of the activities that we can carry out in classroom which are fun as well as educational. Moreover I believe that indirect learning is an effective way of teaching as it enables the pupils to acquire the language more quickly compare to direct learning.

“Children’s creative use of limited language resources” was the topic presented by the next group. Here it explains that although the child could not utter sentences which are grammatically correct but they are able to express their concept creatively. Here pupils tend to convey the intended meaning based on their own experiences.

The last group presented on “The role of imagination” and this is the topic that really interests me. I felt that imagination is a powerful stimulus that provides real language use. Besides, role of imagination suits pupils with different learning style as well as different characteristic. Teacher’s role is very crucial in developing imagination among the pupils. For instance, teacher can carry out activities like role play, hot seat as well as drama, where pupils will act out the character involved in those activities.

After all the group had presented, Pn. Foziah taught us how to use MOYEA to download songs and videos. This is the new thing that Pn. Foziah told us at the beginning of the class. MOYEA is not only useful when we step into school but also for current use when we want to download our favourite songs and videos. This software is convenient as it saves our time because we are able to download the songs and videos within a short time.

The class for today was very interesting because we learn many new things from our friends as well as Pn. Foziah. Thanks to Pn. Foziah and all my friends who presented today as they gave many beneficial information which is very useful for me as well as my profession in future.