Monday, March 23, 2015

Slow Progress on Textbooks

I always take time to cover textbook contents. My average pace is to do a single page in an hour, which is, I would imagine, longer than many other teachers spend.

For instance, if I teach the expression of, "I'm going to ask Peter to call you," the first action of mine is to make sure my students understand the sentence. I will then check my students' pronunciation, which usually marks the end of exercise needed for the dialog part.

Instead of ending there, I will ask my students to imagine a situation where they use the expression in real life. Instructions will be orally given, and quick students will know that they have to replace Peter with the name of someone else. Some students will need more detailed instructions. If they say, "I'm going to ask Ms. Suzuki to call you," I will ask who Ms. Suzuki is. I may even challenge my students about the contents of the call. So, a page needs an hour to finish.

To be honest, there was a concern in my mind that I am too slow to do textbook pages. Yesterday, I realized that there was no need for such worries, for in the  linguaculture class where language study and culture study meets students can be challenged to engage in real-life conversations (Shalules, 2015).

- Nicky Sekino

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