Sunday, March 23, 2008

Being Evaluated

I was quite nervous when I was being evaluated. I was not sure if I had it all to ace my microteaching. At the end if the microteaching Cik Siti actually said that she was impressed with what I had. She was impressed with the set induction and also mentioned that I made it clear about what I would be teaching in the pre-reading stage. I paired up with Manesha for the microteaching. We did not get to do our pre-reading stage as we did not have much time left but she glanced through our lesson plan and she was already impressed with it because of the instructions in the worksheet which connected with the previous activities. The only thing was that my last while-reading activity was 200 words essays and she said it would not be appropriate for while-reading stage. Anyway she gave us 13.5 over 15, so I guess that she was impressed with my work. Thanks to Dr. Edwin as I followed every single thing that he taught me in the previous semester.

Coming to being evaluated by my friends were the worst part as they did not give right comments such as how was the pronunciation or if the text was appropriated but we got comments such as the amount of worksheets were not enough!

The other thing is that every one commented good and excellent for all the stages but when it comes to the “grade” part, most of them gave me a “B” or a “B+”! If all the stages were good and excellent and nothing was wrong or to be commented, then I would deserve at least an “A” or “A-”!! So I do not know what went wrong there. And my best friends gave so many comments such as the activity was so lousy and all other cheeky comments and gave me an “A” when they graded me. So I guess this grading thing does not work with people that you know because they tend not to be so serious when they do so. Its hard to evaluate someone you know because you do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

As for me, I have not come to the stage where I am able to grade others as I do not know what I am grading on and what I am looking for in a person. I may need time to adapt to this kind of situations. So I guess this evaluating others would be a great start for me to give an honest grade to others.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Review on "A Streetcar Named Desire "

This is the only movie i enjoyed watching. this is because i have read the play before watching the movie. the movie was exactly as how it was written. it gave me a chance to compare how i have imagined the play and how the play was acted out. so obviously was i imagined was totally different then what was on the screen but the settings that i imagined was not that bad (hehe). Anyway the movie was interesting as it help me in understanding the play better. So it gave me a broader view on A Streetcar Named Desire!

Friday, March 21, 2008

Evaluating Others

It is quite hard to evaluate people that you know. That is how I felt when I evaluated them because it did not want to offend them. In order to give a fare evaluation I appeared “anonymous” in the evaluating paper to cover my identity and so that hey would not feel offended or have grudges against me.

For what I saw, some of them did a great job on their activities and others just did it for the sake of participating. For the set inductions stage most of them did a great job and got our attention. There are some of them who went over the border and had violent video clips or animations which is not appropriate for school students though it was interesting. This stage was learner orientated but most of the teachers failed to connect the set induction with the lesson that they are about to learn or to pre-reading stage. There was not much explanation about the set induction about what the students are going to learn. Even if there were some introduction it seemed vague.

In pre-reading stage the extracts that were chosen were in appropriate length, were not too short and were not too long. Most of the activities that were carried out were quite interesting and appropriate and it was within the learner’s ability. But the only thing is that some of them failed to give out the instruction clear and there were quite a few teachers who were grammatically wrong when they gave out the instructions to the learner.

In the while reading stage as usual some failed to connect it with their pre- reading stage. The activities were efficient and were not too taught for the learners. During the pre-reading stage and while-reading stage the activities were learner centered and the teacher was being facilitators.

There is a lot to improve in teachers language as they still seem to have trouble in pronouncing and speaking in English. They seem to be influenced by their accent and as Dr. Edwin always say “Speak English!” now I understand what he means when I evaluate others. Besides pronunciation and grammars the voice projection was loud and clear though one or two seem to have trouble with it. There isn’t problem that cant be solved.

Besides that the teachers should know the answers and double check with others to see if its right before they teach it. I have experienced in re-doing my microteaching almost four time to get my adjectives right and I think I must be an expert when it comes to adjectives now. I noticed during the evaluation that one of the pair did an activity on adjectives and they have answers which were not adjectives at all! And at that particular time I coud not question them because I don’t have the right to do so and the s=lesson jusr went on with wrong answers. This would have been a problem if they were teaching students in school and giving wrong information.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Review on "Macbeth"

This is not the kind of movie which I would pay money to watch. It was too violent for me, extremely violent to e exact. I did not enjoy watching the movie because most of the time I was covering my eyes and peeping through to get glimpse of what was happening.
Murders after murders, blood every where. Chopped heads were flying everywhere. I didn’t quite understand the movie. The beginning of the movie was a bit ok but then its started to get “bloody”. I planned to read the play to get better understanding. As I have seen the movie (partially), I would be able to imagine the situation when I read the play.