Week 4

With the growing use of English in the world community, English is no longer the language of English people. It has gained the status of an international language not only because it is used as a lingua franca but because people in different parts of the world use as their ‘other tongue’.

Here, I remember a joke:

A mouse, hiding in a hole in the wall, was scared of venturing out where a huge tomcat was poison to catch it.

After an hour, the pouring sounds stopped, and the mouse could only hear the sound of a rooster crowing. I can go out now, the mouse thought. The danger is gone.

Unfortunately, the cat was still patiently waiting for its prey. He pounced on the mouse, gobbled it up and turned to a kitten, saying, “You see, being a bilingual has its advantage.”

This week, we practiced Reading and Writing skills. Reading obviously is a receptive skill because we receive message by reading something. Reading without understanding is just barking at prints and therefore reading involves understanding and comprehension. Similarly, writing is the act of putting down something, which has been spoken, in conventional graphic form.

“ It is only by listening English that you learn to listen English; it is only by speaking English that you learn to speak English; it is only by reading English that you learn to read English;  and it is only by writing English that you learn to write English.”

Next, I made a lesson plan, I can say an electronic lesson plan. It was a new experience for me. I did this task at last because it at first confused me. I did not know what to do. I waited for my friends to post at first. I read them then only could to any thing. I read  many reports and liked the report of Jarek Krajka jkrajka [at] batory.plo.lublin.pl Stefan Batory Pallottine Secondary School (Lublin, Poland) Adam Mickiewicz University (Poznan, Poland). The report was about Using the internet in ESL Writing Instruction.

The last task was of the third step of our project work. This week we had to find out problems. I analyzed my students and could say that my students are very poor at speaking of the second language. They are not confident while speaking and always tried to escape.

“Knowledge should be based on observation and only then the world can restore a truer relationship between observing mind and the observed nature and scientific progress becomes possible. Knowledge should be for the benefit and application to man. The sequence of knowledge should be from observation to understanding the practical application of it.”  -Francis Bacon

As a whole the week was fantastic… I enjoyed a lot and learned a lot….

Aparna