intelligence
Quotient,
A person’s mental and physical growth usually corresponds.
Both types of growth stop at various ages, depending on the individual. For
instance, one person may be 1.6 meters tall at the age of sixteen, and never
grow taller. But his brother may continue growing until he has reached 1.8
meters at the age of nineteen. Mental growth for most people stops some time
during the teens.
If you take all the children born on October 10, 2004, for
example, and examine them today, they will be different in physical
development. Some will be tall, some average, and some short. But they will
also differ in mental development. Some will be bright and able to learn new
things easily some will be average, and some will be very slow in their ability
to learn. This difference in mental development may be considered a difference
in mental age.
While we can measure the height of a person, how do we
measure mental development? A series of mental tests have been worked out for
this purpose. Here is how it is done: First we find out which problems can be
resolved by the children of various ages. Six-year-olds can do certain
problems; eight-year-olds can do others, and so on.
Now purpose we give the test for six-year-olds to various
children. A few four-year-old and five-year-old children can also do them. On
the other hand, there may be children ten or twelve years old for whom they are
too difficult. So now we have a way of measuring intelligence. If a six-year-old
can do just the six-year-old test, he is average. If a child of four or five
can do this test, he is superior. If a ten-year-old can’t even do the
six-year-old test, he is retarded.
The letters “I.Q.” are an abbreviation for “intelligence
Quotient,” which is a way of describing the results of these tests in
mathematical terms. For example, a six-year-old child with a mental age of six
has an I.Q. of 100. The mental age is divided by the chronological age (age in
years) and then multiplied by 100. If a five-year-old has a mental age of six,
his I.Q. is 120 (six divide by five, times 100). I.Q.’s between 90 and 100 are
average; those above 110 are considered superior.
Friday, 18 November 2011
Teaching Speaking
Listening is usually followed by replying. So not only
student need to be able to listen and understand, they need to speak as well. Speaking
also helps learners improve reading and writing.
Difficulties in practicing spoken English
When we learn any foreign language , it is not easy to start
speaking it. We live in Pakistan where we come across several regional
languages, still we do not speak all these languages . This can give you some
idea of difficulty in trying to speak a completely foreign language like
English.
Students usually want to learn how to speak English but they
feel shy in handling different sounds of English. Secondly , classes are
usually so large that the teacher can’t allow individual time for talking to
them. Furthermore , the teacher himself /herself may not feel confident to
speak in English .
So keeping these points in mind we shall suggest some basic
exercises for practicing the speaking skill.
Stages of an oral lesson
The presentation stage
This is the first stage of an oral lesson. At this stage
teacher presents the new language , grammar or a function which the students
are going to learn . He can present in different ways e.g. through showing
pictures or a dialogue or by exploiting a live situation in the classroom.
The practice stage
Having presented the oral model the teacher is now ready to
act before the class , speak or at least “repeat” the “ books of English
language ,” which the teacher has already presented.teh activity which allows
everyone to open their mouth is drilling. The teacher says a sentence and the
class repeats it . This is a certainly not speaking the language but at least
the learners mouth a few English words.
There are two main kinds of drills:
1.
Substitutions; and
2.
Transformation drills.
Substitution drills:
Substitution drills go like this:
T: Nasima is washing clothes. (Students repeat after the
teacher)
S: Nasima is washing clothes.
T: sweeping the house.
S: Nasima is sweeping the house.
T: reading a book.
S: Nasima is reading a book.
Transformation drills:
These drills are used to practice changes , for example ,
from affirmative to negative or integrative, from noun/pronoun to another.
T: Ali is writing letters. (Use Nasima)
S: Nasima is writing letters.
I am going to school .(use her)
S: she is going to school.
T:he is washing dishes. (Use I)
S: I am washing dishes.
The production stage:
At this stage the students are expected to use the language
independently . Perhaps it is too much to repeat at the level of 4th or 5th
. However in class 6th and 7th , they should be able to
say a few sentences on their own to each other.
Monday, 14 November 2011
Teaching “listening”
You will agree that that in order to learn a foreign
language, we should be able to listen and understand that language. This is how
we learn our own language. As children, we first listen to our family speaking
the language and then we gradually come to understand that language.
English is a foreign; still we do not teach our students how
to listen to this language. As a teacher you can tell your students to;
1.
Listen to the radio for news, weather forecast,
sports news, commentaries, reports, speeches etc.
2.
Watch a TV program of film.
3.
Take part in a lesson, seminar, and interview.
4.
Follow instruction.
If you keep talking in your classroom do you think all the
students are listening to you?
If the students follow the above suggestions, they will be
able to understand the main points of a message/story, etc. They may also be
able to act in answer to what they listen to.
At present, the English language textbooks do not help you
in teaching listening skill. So you are required to think of exercises and
activities which will develop this skill in your students we know it is not an
easy task, however, I suggest the following guideline for you:
1.
If you are lucky to be in a school with
electricity, then you can use your own radio or a cassette player.
2.
If this facility is not available, then you can
read aloud and your students can listen to you.
3.
Read or record material which is interesting for
your students.
4.
When you ask your students to listen, always ask
them to listen for some specific items. They should be asked to do some thing after
listening. Otherwise they will not listen: they will only hear your voice.
Type of listening
There are mainly two types of listening: extensive
listening, and intensive listing.
Extensive listening, Intensive listening
Like extensive reading, it aims at getting pleasure by a
broad and general understanding of the text, where as whereas intensive
listening is for the sake of more detailed and more specific information.
Let us consider watching a film. If it is a cow boy film we
can guess what is going-on by watching actions and we do not listen. But if it
is a serious film we attend to conversation more. Still in both type of movies
we listen extensively. Contrary to films if we listen to a special news item
our listening is more intensive because we want to know the details.
Four steps in a listening lesson
1.
Create expectations within the students through
discussion, etc.
2.
Set a task and give the students a purpose for
listening.
3.
Give the correct answers to the students in the
form of class or individual correction, so that the students may check their
work.
4.
Follow-up task. At this stage the teacher may
give oral or written task related to the listening activity.
Sunday, 13 November 2011
Characteristics of an English Teacher
The English language teacher herself/himself is the most
important factor in teaching English as second language. As an English teacher,
remember you are the model of your students. You have to be interested in
teaching and should be aware of the basic requirements of teaching English.
Here is the list of the basic requirements and qualities which you should
develop in you, in order to be a teacher of English.
A. Language skill
You have to be familiar with all the four skills of English
language that is listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. You can maintain a list of language functions. These functions must be
encouraged in your English class all the time.
B. fluency
Your spoken English must be fluent so that you can create an
atmosphere of spoken English in classroom. You should see that your voice/tone
is not dull. You should vary your tone.
C. Creativity and initiative
You should develop lot of initiative and should try to use new
ideas to stimulate, motivate and involve the students in the use of English
language. For example, you should be able to motivate your students before and
during the lesson with humor and role playing.
D. Adopt lessons to students’ experience:
You should be bold enough not to rely entirely on courses book,
but be able to adopt the course material and supplement it. You can stimulate
your students’ previous knowledge and relate it to the lesson of English. For
example the topic from Domestic Science, Social Studies, Urdu, or Science which
are related to the English lesson can motivate your students to use there own
experience and spark discussion among them. Hence they will be using both
English and their previous knowledge. You should also encourage your students
to draw on the experience in everyday life. You lesson should be
student-centered.
E. Lesson plans and record-keeping
Your lesson plans should incorporate all the four skills of
English language. They should be interlinked with each other. For example
reading skill should lead to spoken and discussion and listing skill to be
reached in written form and vise versa.
You must keep check on each member of the class. A note of
each student’s activities, mistakes, problems in grammar etc should be kept in
a record-book to be consulted while planning your text lesson.
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