Category Archives: Article Reviews

An Academic or A more Practical Approach

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China had colsed-door foreign policy so they did not need to speak English but it was enough to understand writing materials. Because of that reason Grammar-Translation method was uniqe. In our world Grammar-Translation method does not work because policies have changed.

People need to speak English. In China it is not easy to get rid of the Grammar-Translation method as it has powerful root. Students are unfamiliar with modern methods so they feel unsecure when a new method is performed. They want to change their teacher.

Another factor which is obstacle to new methods is ‘unqualified teachers’. ‘Qualified teacher’ are not someone who are good at four basic skills but it means that they are good at both four skills and methodology. Grammar-Translation method is really easy one for teachers so teachers may choose it.

Qualified teachers may come across some problems,too. Students feel secure when second language is translated into first language. It is sure that students ask teachers to translate but according to the modern methods it is not a good way to teach language. Teacher tries to satisfy students by visualize the word or explaining in second language.

Solutions proposed by the author is logical and applicable, I think. But it will take long. It is possible change system in the planning stage but it is not so easy to practise the changes properly. Students,families,teachers,head of the colleges must be made conscious. As a teaching methodology tactics in the essay seems to work. We sould decrease use of first language as much as possible.

The name of the essay is ‘An Academic or A more Practical Approach’. It was published in China and written by Xiao Aili, head of the English department in Changsha EDucation College of Hunan Province. The essay was retrived from here

Teaching and Developing Vocabulary

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The title of this article is Teaching and Developing Vocabulary: Key to Long –Term Reading Success. It was written by John J. Pikulski and Shane Templeton. It was published in Houghton Mıfftın. It was retrieved from http://www.eduplace.com/state/author/pik_temp.pdf .

This article’s main purpose is to give information about the importance of vocabulary. According to the writer of this article, young children learn to communicate through listening and speaking. In order to make the transition to communicating through reading and writing, they need a large meaning vocabulary and effective decoding skills.

In this article, the writer explains what vocabulary means, why teaching vocabulary to children is so important and how we can improve our students’ vocabulary skills. Firstly vocabulary is the sum of words used by, understood by, or at the command of a particular person or group. We need to teach vocabulary to children in order to facilitate the comprehension of a text that students will be assigned to read. We also teach vocabulary to students, because they cannot communicate without vocabulary knowledge. They cannot understand what they read or hear. According to a research ( Scorborough, 2001) children with weak vocabulary skills are likely to encounter difficulty in lerning to read. In order to improve our students’ vocabulary skills, we should first improve their reading skills.

The single most important activity for building the knowledge required for eventual success in reading is reading aloud the children (Anderson et. Al. 1985). It increases our students’ vocabulary skills. Instructional reading aloud will be more beneficial. Research suggests that wide reading plays a critical role in developing knowledge. Teachers play an important role in facilitating this process.

Teachers should teach to students the strategies for learning words independently.teachers should teach students vocabulary directly, when it is necessary. They need to encourage students to use dictionaries and other reference books. Stutents who are interested in learning will lern better, so every teacher should attempt to develop interest for learning. They should develop and sustain students’ interest in and curiosity about words.

Before I read this article, I did not think teaching vocabulary to students is so important. I do not have much idea about how to teach and what to teach to students. After I read this article, I had some idea about teaching vocabulary. Firstly I learned I need to create a keen awareness of and a deep interest in language and words in order to be successful.I realized that reading is too important in teaching vocabulary. I learned the strategies for deriving word meaning. I believe that these will be helpful for me, while teching vocabulary to children.

Teaching Grammar

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This article’s title is Teaching Grammar. It was written by Diana Larsen-Freeman . It was retrieved from  here.

Second language educaters have difficulty in deciding which approaches they will use. They have alternated between favoring teaching approaches which focus on having students analyse language in order to learn it and those who which encourage students to use the language in order to acquire it.

The writer talks about approaches which not only focus on grammar, but also on grammar. He says there are some approaches which devote a significant amount of classrom time to develop communication skills such as community language learning, suggestopedia, and communicative approach. He also talks about natural approach which suggest that as long as students receive comprehensiple input, language learning is possible. We used to believe that form was more important than communication. Now we believe that communication is more important than form.

When students learn to communicate, the mastery of the forms will take care of itself, but the problem is that form does not take care of itself. We need to teach grammar, but teaching grammar does not require a focus on form or structure alone. Linguistic accuracy is also important as much as communication.

Teaching grammar means enabling language students to use linguistic forms accurately, meaningfully and appropriately. In dealing with the complexity of grammar, there are three dimensions of language that must be dealt with: the form or structure, their semantics or meaning, the pragmatic conditions. Form is related to how it is formed, meaning is related to what it means and pragmatic deals with when and why it is used. The wrter explains these three dimension of language with examples. And he says three of them are important in teaching English.

After I read this article, I understand that in teaching English, teaching grammar alone is not effective. We should focus on  meaning in teaching language, but we should not underestimate the form. Form is also important in teaching language. While we are teaching grammar, we shoul not give the rules expicitly. We should give students a chance to understand the form themselves. We can use these approaches in Turkey. If we use these approaches inTurkey, then maybe students can communicate effectively.

Testing Vocabulary

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The title of the article is ‘Testing Vocabulary’. The author of the article is S. Kathleen. The publishment date 1996. It has been retrived from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED398254.pdf

Vocabulary knowledge is important for teaching language. There are four kinds of vocabulary:

Active speaking words; these word are used in spoken language and students  produce  active speaking words.

Passive listening words; these words are not produced by students. Students just recognize passive listening words.

Active writing words which are used in writing.

Passive reading words, which students recognize in reading passages. Test writers are generally prone to test passive reading vocabulary. If vocabulary kinds are known by test writers this mistake can be corrected. If test writers have a syllabus to base on  it is easy to write a test. But in proficiency tests it is hard to create a test because  there is no certain level of vocabulary. There are some types of vocabulary: multiple choice task, synonym/definition items, picture items, sentence items, context items, set items,matching items, completion items, formation items, guessing meaning from context.

As it is stated in the article, passive reading vocabulary is generally tested in our country, other kinds are not taken into importance. By analyzing vocabulary testing types, we can correct this mistake.

Testing Grammar

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The  title  of  the  article  is  ‘Testing  Grammar’. The  author  of  the  article is S. Kathleen. It was published in 1996. It is retrived from http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED398256.pdf

Grammar knowledge is one of the basis of using language. Hence, testing grammar is really important. There are some types of testing grammar:

 

Multiple Choice Questions; this type is most popular and used one. It is easy to mark students. Generally, studens are given sentences with blanks and asked to choose most suitable answer from choices below. Sometimes,testees are given a sentence and choices, then they are asked to choose the same meaning sentence with the sentence above. Test writers must give enough context; neither so much, nor so little. Short reading passages is more convenient than individual sentences. Moreover, they are enjoyable for students.

Error Correction; testees are given a sentence and there is an error in the sentence. Four phrase or words have been marked with letters and testees are asked to find the error.

Transformation Items is another type of testing grammar. Testee are given a sentence and some words of a sentence, then asked to rewrite the sentence above by using words below and without changing the meaning. Disadvantage of this test is that teacher must know other alternative answers that may be given by testees.

Word Changing Items is another type. Students are given a sentence with a blank and a word in parenthesis. Students are asked to fill the blank but they have to use another form of the word.

Grammar teaching is common in out country and grammar testing is improved well. Teachers use almost all of the types at school. The most popular one is Transformation Test, I think. Multiple Choice questions should be used for younger learners because it is not alright with testing high level skills. I have learned that grammar  is one of Essentials of teaching language and it is benefical to use language properly and I learned some types of testing grammar.

Defining Writing Ability

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The title of the article is Defining Writing Ability for classroom writing assesment in high schools. It was published  in 2009 in Journal of Pan Pasific Association of Applied Linguistics. The author of the article is Jyi-Yeon Yi. It was retrieved from http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15324818AME1503_5

The article is about How to test writing skills in high schools. The author says that the importance of writing skills is growing, so we should cover this skill in compulsory sections of tests. In order to administer valid and appropriate writing assessments,We should develop a test to start by defining the construct. In writing, the contexts include five aspects: task, situation organizer, writer, setting and material. We should consider these five aspects, while defining the writing ability. We should also consider charecteristics of the learners and pedagocical aims in constructing writing skills. The author gives definitions of writing ability formulated according to the three main approaches to the teaching of writing. (product-based

approaches, process-based approaches and reader/genre-based approaches) there are different definitions of it given by different teachers. The author also mentions about that we shoul consider learners’ features and the teaching objectives while assessing their writing skills. This makes a positive backwash effect on students. We should also be careful about whether there is construct validity or not in our tests, because It has been the main concern in measurement. When devising writing assessments, therefore, teachers need to consider the definition of writing ability and use it as a pivotal point, in order to be sure of their inferences about students’ writing ability and their decisions based on these inferences.

From this article I have learnt, I should have a description of writing skills at first in order to make good assesment in writing. I also learnt validity is important in assessing writing skills, so we should consider it. We also should consider our students’ level and interest. This makes positive backwash effect on students. We can use these informations in Turkey, while preparing writing tests.

Testing Writing in the EFL Classroom: Student Expectations

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The title of the essay is ‘Testing Writing in the EFL Classroom: Student Expectations’. The author of the essay is Nahla Nola Bacha. The edition date is April 2000. It is retrived from http://eca.state.gov/forum/vols/vol40/no2/p14.htm

Students’ grade expectations effect  testing writing negatively. And it may cause theirs motivation to get lower. Another important topic handled in the essay is writing process is dynamic and changing. And the tesiting should be based on course objectives and methodologies. There are two important aims of testing; first of them is to give feedback during teaching the skill process, the second is to mark and to grade the level of the students. In our time testing is used to grade the level of the students. As in all tests writing tests shoul be evaluated through two criterias; reliability and validity.  One survey performed at Lebasene American University. Students had a writing exam and additionaly they were asked their grade expectations. According to the result difference between students’ real grades and expectations are huge. The result of the essay is that teachers should show students’ levels to the students. They can do this by showing professional essays and some other ways.

Grade is important  for students in our country, too. As far as I see, the essay criticises high unfair grades. Teachers give high grades to students and students cannot  see  their real levels. In Turkey, teachers should be more careful while grading students. Additionally, teachers should give more feedbacks in order to show real levels of students to themselves.

Testing Writing

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The title of the article is Testing Writing. It was published  in 1996. The author of the article is Kitao, S. Kathleen ; Kitao, Kenji. It was retrieved from Here

The article is about testing writing. At first It mentions about two major problems in testing writing. First of them is objectivity of evaluation. Second problem is that It is necessary to develop a scale in order to evaluate objectively and It is very difficult.

The author also gives information about componants of writing. The ability to write involves at least six component skills. These are grammatical ability, lexical ability, mechanical ability, stylistic skills, organizational skills and judgement of appropriacy.

Grammatical ability is about the ability to write English in grammatically correct sentences. Lexical ability is about the ability to choose words thet are correct and used appropriately. Mechanical ability involves the ability to use punctuation correctly.

Stylistic skills are related to using sentences paragpaphs appropriately. Organizational skills is about organizing written work according to conventions of English.

The most important and the most difficult of these skills is the last. It is about making judgements about what appropriate depending on the task, the purpose of the writing and the audience. Except from these, the author gives information about types of writing tasks. These are gap filling, form completion, making corrections, letter writing and essay writing. Gap filling is one of the most controlled way of testing writing.

Another controlled way of testing writing is form completion, which is somewhat communicative. Disadvantage of it is that it does not any connected discourse. Making correction does not represent the writing task as a whole. Writing letter is one of the common tasks. Essay writing should be used carefully. After that, the author mentions about the charecteristics intermetiate and advanced writing tests.

First he explains how instructions to be. The instructions should be as short as possible and clear. It should indicate the time allowed for the task and instructions related to the length in number of words. Choosing topic is a very important part of the writing task. The topic should motivate students to write. The tester has to consider the background knowledge of students about the topic. Finally the author gives information about marking tests of writing. The marking tests of writing should be subjective. We can use descriptors for this purpose.

I learned some component skills of writing, which are important in evaluating students’ writing skills. We can evaluate our students’ writing skills according to these criterias. I also learned types of writing tasks. There are different types of writing tasks. We can use all of them in our English classes by looking at our purpose and students’ level. For example If our students’ level is low, we can use gap filling or form completion instead of using writing essay or writing letter. I learned that I have to be careful while choosing the topic, which should be appropriate to students’ level and while choosing the task. Instructions should be clear and short. We can use given information in Turkey, while preparing tests for evaluating students’ writing skills. It was a good and beneficial article.