You Need to Speak Up!

To many general notions, SPEAKING is a difficult skill to master, yet many learners truly acknowledge its power as a dynamic instrument to communicate, interact, advise, educate, and more as the list goes on. If you spend one day just to count the values of being a good speaker, then I believe you would need a long stick of pencil and a dozen of

blank pieces of paper to jot down the advantages as your thoughts flow through the extent of your attention. The point is there are numerous positive effects from being a good speaker (I bet know them too clearly).

It upsets me every time my students come admitting the false facts that because they are not native English speakers, they then don’t have to be good at speaking. Some added that they have tried to their hardest, yet they couldn’t be consistent enough to be conscious of their own speaking, and subsequently produced explicit errors (undesirable). While people may come up with different views regarding good speaking, I would recommend my students to highlight EFFECTIVE speaking, more than just being good.

Understand the Silent Enemies

1. Fear

Fear is the number ONE foe, intimidating you to give up on your speaking practice. Fear of people; Fear of making mistakes; Fear of being judged; Fear of being different; Fear of fears. They are parts of human. So, how to get rid of them? I suggest you to stand firm physically and psychologically, and believe that you can do because a thousand good speakers somewhere have won these same battles you are facing now. As a matter of fact, they are no different from you. They are humans like you, share common feelings, and have limitation like us. Yet they found their ways winning their fear. Here is what you need to bear in mind--Nothing is beyond your capability. The problem lies at the point whether you are willing to take a step in or not.

1. Carelessness

I witnessed a friend of mine who was doing a graduate degree in TESOL with me in Phnom Penh. Tep Livina is a good speaker for any situations he was in. He was careful with his speech, and took every moment seriously (and enjoyably). He always read books from home, and came to class with awesome ideas and interesting questions. That’s how things work! We plan, and plan, and plan in order to be effective. On the opposite side, carelessness causes you to doubt your own capability and allow fear and discouragement to take control your thoughts. Carelessness lowers down the degree of your consciousness and awareness of situations, and it then allows pressure to besiege. Thus, I suggest you to prepare and predict what might happen up on stage.   

Be a Good Observer 

More problems arises because students do control their attention that would lead to producing right language. A good speaker is, too, a good listener and observer. Pick up a role model! A role model is someone whom you believe to possess skills and are able to perform good/attractive speech. For example, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Malcolm X., ...etc. Observe his/her verbal and behavioral qualities such as the following:

1. Patterns: Stick your head to the melody of speech as the person speaks. Notice sentences, pauses, and accent.
2. Pace: It’s the speed of speech operation.
3. Intonation: The up and down of stress and tone
4. Meaningful and musical pauses: It’s so important to understand the messages of pauses. Some pauses are used as silent communicative instruments to make the message loud and clear in listeners’ head.
5. Rhythms: Key the attractive and interestingness in voice projection
6. Voice Purity: A good speaker wouldn’t choose to adopt a fake voice. Voices are the human identity and they are unique and particular.
7. Natural Voice Projection: Pretensions in voice are less acceptable by many, except for some explicit reasons.
8. Pitch and Tempo: It’s the highness and lowness of your voice. Remember, circumstances and purposes determine your pitch and tempo.
9. Voice Flexibility: A good speaker is not a robot. Voice and tone of a speaker need to vary to ensure readers’ full attention.
10. Chunk Creation: If a speaker is well planned and well-reheased, he/she would know the catch-up phrase, and the important ideas s/he wish to hand on.

To communicate clear and expressive ideas, you need to consider physical emphasis feats, because they will help intensify your messages, put more weights to the speech rigors, and more interestingly they light up attractiveness and clarity. Consider the following:

1. Postures
2. Facial Expression
3. Hand movements
4. Body movements

Be a Consistent Practitioner

Knowing how to operate any tasks is not the end yet. There are more factors you need to strengthen and cooperate when you proceed the task in action. I suggest you to build unshakable passion regarding the issue of Speaking. Know that you are practicing your speech everywhere, and with everyone you meet. Call each time you talk to people an opportunity for your serious practice, yet do it naturally and enjoyably.

In sum, be consistent with the journey you are going to take, and believe that your success await you somewhere at the corner. For more, to engage the effective speaking skill, you should never undermine the key principles (as I call them central and dynamic for productive speech):

• Sincerity: Be clear and natural to your points communicating; It’s not embarrassing to talk about your mistakes.
• Friendliness: Establish positive and relaxed environment for speech.
• , and Authority: Be clear of your expertise; Don’t try to cover things you are not good at.

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Posted in: Learning Tips,Self-Development,Speaking,Strategies

Dictionary Effects

What is a dictionary? Answer: It is a rather special book filled with words and explanation. Most dictionaries are arranged by the order of the alphabets, known as "Alphabetic order." Some dictionaries are small, thin, and colorful, while some others are large, thick and heavy. A smaller size dictionary is called "Pocket Dictionary" for the reason that you can just put it in your pocket…very portable (easy to carry with you). A thick and large size dictionary is generally known as Reference dictionary, Corpus, and Encyclopedia. These books provide larger information about words, history of words, meaning and definition,…etc.

What Can I Learn?

A good dictionary for general English learners could only be defined by individual learners depending on their preferences. Personally, I particularly like Oxford English Pocket Dictionary because I find many interesting input features (language items) in there that other dictionary would fail to offer. So, back the question "What I can learn from a dictionary?", I am going to the explain the details in the following lines. First I wish to start with the objectives/goals/purposes of using or needing a dictionary. Many language users share similar experience and goals of using a dictionary as they believe a dictionary is objectively used to define any particular words that they are not familiar with. Without objections, I would like to add more things that you can do or can learn from a dictionary.

• To define words
• To learn correct spellings for words
• To practice correct pronunciation (You can always find phonetic column in a dictionary)
• To denote (show) the grammatical functions of words such as v.(verb), n.(noun), adj.(adjective)….so on
• To understand the historical meaning or origin of the words (whether the words are rooted from Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Sanskrit, Saxon or Hebrew)
• To seek out synonymous and antonymous words (You get more choices of words for your writing or speaking)
• To visually experience the words in the form of pictures, diagram, graphs, or other illustrations

How to be a fast dictionary opener?

This question takes me back to the starting point of the my journey in learning English. I remember that I treat my beloved dictionary like someone or something special that I can turn to when I have problems with language learning. I took my dictionary to the many places I went to including schools, markets, home, and more places where I went and when my pockets are available. Back to 1998 when I was at Siem Riep middle school, many people would remember me as the fastest dictionary opener. It means I could get to the words more quickly than other learners. In this blog, I wish to share my personal secrets to be a fast dictionary opener.

• Buy a dictionary that you find the most useful (The one that meets your needs in using). Look for the one that have darken marks for the alphabet order on the side edge. Get the one that share two or three columns on one page.
• Develop affective connection (emotional) with your dictionary. How? Simply just, play with it. Personalize your dictionary by adding colors, hand writing text, picture and more of your preferences.
• Be familiar with location of the alphabetic order of words (follow the darken marks)
• Before opening, you need to quickly memorize the first syllable of the word in your head
• Do not use finger to run through lists of words.
• Once in a while, challenge your classmates to open dictionary
• Involve in the opening dictionary competitions or Spelling Bee.
• Set aside 5 minutes each day to practice opening a dictionary (Make it fun and cheerful)

Final thought

 Words are like weapons. It's better to master words, than to have a city for your own. One who could master words could express ideas, thoughts, and secrets of mind better than those who couldn't. Brighten your days by learning one new word a day. Within two years, can you imagine how many words you might have learned?

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Posted in: Learning Tips,Research,Vocabulary

Brain as a Lazy Machine

"Teacher, what is brain?" asked a young boy while scratching his head.

The teacher paused for a couple seconds and explained "It's simply a machine."

"I don't understand", the boy continued.

"Well little one, it is in everyone's head, ...and is like a machine that works non-stop", answered the teacher.

However, many times this machine gets lazy because the machine owner doesn't use it so often.

"So, you mean our brain is lazy if I don't do anything with it?", the boy confirmed.

"That's right boy! You can become the most intelligent young boy ever, if you keep using your brain", the teacher petted on the boy's head and told him to return to his seat.

Brain-based Learning

It is a simple truth that our brain is a machine. Yet, knowing this much would not yet lead to anywhere you wish to be. I believe that knowing how to use this flimsy machine matters most. The secret of a successful learner is Brain-based learning. Actually this learning approach is defined differently according to purposes and fields. Here, Brain-Based Learning is a way to encourage learners to actively use their thinking such as defining, comparing, comprehending, collecting, evaluating, and more as the list goes on. A good learner needs to regularly assign the brain to work on something. The goal is to keep your brain active, engaging and positive. You never know and understand the full power of the brain if you just sit back and be quiet as a passive learner. Confirm this statement to yourself "I am very poor at English." After a moment of pausing, ask another question "How can I be good at English?" Do you feel the difference? To the first statement, when you cite the fact about the matter, you brain will just approve and subsequently does nothing in response. Yet, if you ask questions as if assignments, your brain will double its speed and power which sooner or later you'll have your solutions to your problems. What can we learn from this experience? Answer: Our brain is a problem-solving enterprise.

Engaging Interaction/Performance in Learning

Learning by asking many questions at any appropriate times and any places will keep your brain active and focusing. And because the brain is the subject of your body, whatever the brain believes, the body will simply follow with enthusiasm, more or less. In English there are some expressions that truly describe the true nature of the brain such as the following:

Stay active with your brain.

Tease your brain.

Be alert!

Keep watching!

Stay tune!

Attention!

There are many reasons you are not supposed to miss asking questions in and off class. Asking questions attracts your teacher to involve with you on any particular problems. Your teachers grow to be more positive and finds you a serious learner, and subsequently cherish to fulfill the your desire to learn. Asking questions occupies you from negative thoughts and day dreams. It advances you with more skills such as leadership, speech, management, debate, and more…

It's fun to be active!

Expressing your thoughts and insights

Fear of expressing what you believe to be true is the number one enemy to effective learning. There was a young boy who attended a primary school in Germany. He loved asking questions, and enjoyed contributing ideas around matters of discussions. Sometimes his friends had to stop him from sharing, not because his ideas were not useful, but because they were threatened by his insights and intellect. He was Albert Einstein (A boy of many questions).

There are many discoveries today and from the past which have been rooted from stupid ideas. Who knows what you can become? Learn to share ideas and thoughts meaningfully will change your days and the more days to come. I suggest you to paint your days with comments, ideas, thoughts, insights, advise, suggestion, and other verbal and written expressions to your classmates, friends, home mates, and especially to your teachers. The world wants to hear what you think and believe!

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Posted in: Learning Tips,Teaching

Vocabulary to Enrich Communicative Competence

A popular saying from the past says "Words are even sharper than a two edge sword." Words could pierce through people hearts and change their attitudes; they are capable of making someone tear and ending up turning to be negative. Words help a user to express himself/herself more clearly. Some words are weak, while some others are strong, potential, affective, and expressive. Thus, the knowledge of words truly determines our capability in performing thinking and carrying out a task.

Vocabulary to Learners 

How are words best learned? Dr. Steven Krashen in his Monitor Model regarding natural ways of learning  language (Acquisition) suggests that a learner must strive to learn many words that are suitable to his ability, which he calls "Comprehensible Input." I personally advise you to learn words, phrases, and any expressions naturally. What does it mean? The fact that students try to crab words by force such as by memorizing will ultimately result in the loss of words, confusion, frustration and time wasting. One could learn vocabulary more effectively and more efficiently by playing with them, making sentences in spoken and written modes, having conversation with friends by using those words you wish to learn, and etc. The below presentation will offer you 7 ideas to learn vocabulary. I hope that those tips could be useful to you.

Vocabulary to Teachers

I have been teaching English over ten years now, and it has been such fun to experience different methods of teaching. I believe that to teach vocabulary productively is to engage active approaches, i.e. Communicative Language Teaching, Task-Based Language Teaching, Content-Based Language Teaching, and Integration of tasks and activities. Allow students to be communicative, exploring, and expressive through performance. Every time students encounter new words, they need to highlight, underline, or circle around. Acting on words helps students to be enthusiastic and thus understand words unto their natures. Teachers need to pay extra attention on words, and spend sometime to explain students. When teaching vocabulary, a teacher should draw students' to the language elements such as:

1. Spelling

2. Pronunciation

3. Defintion

4. Grammatical elements

5. Collocation

6. Synonyms, Antonym, and hyponym

7. Word origin

8. Usage

These language features are to be considered according to the levels of learners. The presentation below will provide more guides and understanding regarding teaching vocabulary.

 

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Posted in: Learning Tips,Teaching,Vocabulary

Research Design

Writing a research report is no easy, yet is highly valued by many academic societies. The world credits research articles even more than books and other referential sources. Research is more than just dozen pages of papers; they must hold credibility and researchers are required to undergo a particular procedure for pre-research, while-research, and post-research. The following guide by Prof. R.E. Khan provides the feasible ways to understand and to conduct research. The demonstration in this PowerPoint presentation will help pump awareness and deep thought into one's mind. Enjoy!

Research Design

More PowerPoint presentations from devilal

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Posted in: Research Methodology

Learning= Physical + Mental + Emotional/Feeling + Spirit

The most terrible questions I used to hear unceasingly from many friends and students of mine regarding learning and teaching are the punches circling around the methods of effective learning and effective teaching. The questions per se seem never be able to claim the ultimate answer, despite the pure, awesome means by the askers. What I mean is the quests of being an effective teacher or learner as being understood by many seem to undermine the power of human brain, mental capacity, and spiritual gift because many people ignore this simple fact that we are actually more than our plain body and brain. We possess special powers that many rarely take time to realize about them since they are intangible, untouchable, and even unseen by our physical eyes. In this post, I wish to try my best to explain that you are able to learn language even better if you are will to integrate your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual power together. 

Human, the combination of FOUR

The definition for human and its complexity have been discussed over centuries by many big head philosophers such John Locke, Thomas Aquinas, Rene Descates, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and even Buddha. The results found from their search suggest that human is quite above the physical avatar, and not limited to this physical component alone. Many people of recent decades had this firm belief that humans are like computers, in terms of many characteristics. Now, I would like you redirect your mind to an opposite thought that humans are not to compare to a computer. Unlike computer hard wares, our physical body has very close connection to our feelings, which many times arouse our mind to cooperate in actions. For example, every time we are bitten by a mosquito, our brain could immediately detect the pain which is like a sharp needle sticking into our skin through sense of touch. And shortly before we know it, we already smashed that little mosquito dead. Another matter is the error that many people in the past use computer model to compare our mind, thought, and brain with a computer soft wares. I truly find this model even more awkward and illogical. How can that be possible? Imagine the process our brain, mind and thoughts. They are completely random, yet creative. The mind is not limited by any programs. Many times people get confused as they believe habits, attitudes, and norms of our certain behaviors as programs. Actually, they are no programs at all, but are the results of human minds. And as our behaviors operated, our mind forms thoughts and get new elements of information from the environment, and ultimately forms another new thought based on the old ones, which is more sensible, more logical, and more acceptable by the society. What is more, our complete human is holistically built by four components including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual parameters. Computers by nature never come in contact with emotional and spiritual matters. No human could survive without any one of the four parameters. To my understanding, emotion is like the heat releasing from a burning flame. It is intangible, yet powerful that it could affect everyone around. I believe that we can use our emotions as the secondary asset to flame our motivation, and to keep it burning in order to achieve our learning goals which I am going to discuss in the following points. What is spirit? Many people wish to avoid defining the term because they believe that spirits do not exist or they are too mysterious to be comprehend. However, I could assure you we all can understand this matter of spirit as we get involve. See spirit as something like the energy that keep the fire going. it is not the heat. It is not the source of energy (such as wood or charcoal). Spirit is something that keeps pushing you even though your feet and body do not even want to take another step. Spirit manifests and voices in the thoughts when a severely ill person keep whispering to himself saying "my body, why are hurt? Why are you so weak? Why are you so lazy? Get up and walk like a healthy person." The spirit is even more aware, more rational, more logical, and more transient that it never surrender to anything, not even death. Wanting to live forever is not feeling, but a piece of spirit of a trance as your spirit strive to disobey the natural laws. 

Learning by Four

In the past, if one learns by actions such as repairing, rowing, sewing, cooking, and sporting, it is believed to have high effects because students are active, involving, and engaging their FOUR in producing outcome. FOUR means physical, mental, emotional, and spirit. The only way to learn effectively is by acquiring. Unlike learning, acquiring is to get knowledge naturally or subconsciously; not by force; not too intensive. Here is what I am going to suggest you to learn. When you are in class, never sit quietly. Take note while you are listening. Giving filler response in support to the what you teacher raised, by knocking your head; mumbling few words to yourself; circling some points on your textbooks; asking meaningful questions to get more explanation. When you do so, you body is working in associating with your brain. Thus, your physical and mental parameters are working together, and as a result you become even more active, more involving, more attentive, and more energetic comparing to your neighbors who are quietly watching, listening, and yawning. Not enough yet, learn to act your emotions to keep your physical body and mental components to double their speed and capacity. Yes, it is possible. The best quote I truly learned from myself is that I am the most difficult person I ever worked with. It's hard to push ME to the next level. Attitudes are not emotions; they are the results of idleness and passivity of your physicality and mentality. The secrete to push yourself to work hard is by complying your emotions. It's not bad to blame yourself verbally when you are lazy, sitting down all day watching movies from HBO.Get angry with yourself for not doing homework, reading book, and sharing comments in the class. Never sorry for yourself; never tolerate yourself for being arrogant, lazy, unthoughtful, or oversleep. When I was in college, I used to experience crazy things such a staring at the blank wall and doing nothing, and thus saying nothing, and thus doing nothing in classes. And later on I was aware of my passivity and worked bout by being conscious about myself and situations. I become more prepared and more more aware. My emotions turned out to be like an executive manager of my physical and mental employees. They control, push, motivate, supervise, and even punish every time my physical and mental employees don't work to follow expectations. However, most of times our emotions do not come naturally or intentionally. In this case, I suggest you to comply your powerful spirit to navigate your feelings and emotions. How? believing that you can achieve your goals and reach your destination more efficiently. The spirit makes you believe; the beliefs map up your emotions to be on track; your emotions and feelings ultimately manage your physical and mental matters to work. Thus, keep believing that you can learning anything you want to. No matter it is mathematics, languages, laws, business and writing blogs, you shall see results in your enthusiasm more appreciative and satisfactory as you apply the FOUR in your learning and working areas.         

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Posted in: Learning Tips,Motivation,Teaching

Teaching Mixed Ability Classes

Teaching mixed ability classes is a pain in the butt, yet the obtained experience per se allows a teacher to develop deep understanding of situations and teaching-learning distances. The link below directs you to decipher tips and strategies to perform teaching in ways that are seen to be highly engaging, effective, and affective.

Teaching Mixed Ability Classes.ppt

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Posted in: Assessment,Teaching

Reasons for Learning A Second Language

To a common extent, languages are used as wheel-drives for measuring intelligence, effort, and qualities of characters, yet less people have no knowledge of two languages for both general communication and professional interactions. Back to ten years ago, I made up my mind under no guidance to learn English in my small, shabby village, Kandal province. Though I was not well taught, I have set clear goals for opting English as a second language; I wished to be a university professor of a foreign language like one of my distant uncle on my mother side. This dream has always been the horizon that I've ever wanted to chase after everyday of my life. Society and experiences told me that English is a language of interest, intellect, power and global preference. A junior high teacher of English taught me that if I were to pursue my high dream of great intellect and wisdom, I would have to study English language in order to climb those long stairs of my imaginary intellectual journey. By now, I am fully aware and testify such truth. Numbers of international colleges and universities, spread across the globe, use English as a medium language. Billions of books, articles, journals, periodicals, and other written achieves have been written and published in English and distributed around the ball (Globe). 

What is more, English has played the spearhead mediator in the sphere of cyber, on-line, and various form of electronic products and literature. For example, since 1960 the exploitation of internet communication has advanced levels of communications across the oceans and borders, and has integrated English in billions of written and audio-visual resources. In the same veins, as I’ve always dreamed to obtain Ph.D. in language philosophy, English has become the right option for me to grip. Besides, I also agree that English becomes a language power when learners are capable of synthesizing and creatively expressing themselves. Generally speaking, language productions are the measurement of intelligence and reliability.

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Posted in: Learning Tips

Why Needs Analysis?

Experiences tell us that different approaches work best within various, distinctive contexts and conditions, determined and driven by meaningful plans. So to say, it would sound too obvious and negatively light as process activated recklessly without featuring users' significance in that sphere. With all the respects, both learners and teachers could not experience the taste and beauty of the climax as much resources and effort have been invested.

Most modern classrooms are preferred to be a theater or a forum that everyone can experience equal chances of letting go their opinions. Drill a little deeper; don't you think that would be a kind of high risk of wasting time as too much of such activities are overspent? Maybe you and I as teachers need to direct our imagination a little bit. May be there are other ways round that lead us to deliver messages of any contents efficiently. Let's consider of analyzing needs as we try our feet into students' shoes.

To be clear of my stand, I am not by any means against friendly/open style of teaching. I am just vigilant of the quality of learning that our students would absorb. Now, in the most common ways of thinking--as many teachers do--students bring different different sizes and capacity of input into classrooms. To such aspects, we teachers may need to be alert of our teaching strategies.

Clearly, we fully understand that students come to school with different assets and needs. Let's get down into students' assets. Genders, races, cultures, family, ethnicity, and background understanding must be brought up into discussion among teachers. Without further analysis over psychoanalysis, these factors are quite enough to underpin students' interest, needs and vision in learning.

Now, here is the most an interesting part of discussion we should deal with; it's called "STUDENTS' NEEDS." Truism in learning is that students are not meant to determine what they need to learn, especially in GEP compound. It is quite a wise ideal to let students clarify what they WANT to be or to do. However, to go further, it's left up to us as teachers, curriculum designers or education experts. WANTs are tools to enforce goal, not much into solidifying processes. To end this post, I can't leave without advising that teachers, especially, need to be curious about procedures of teaching they are designing. Employing ESP approaches into dissecting activities is highly recommended. Never forget to explain every objective of each learning lesson.

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Posted in: Resources,Strategies

To Train Fluency

Fluency is the prime goal in processes of teaching and learning. Both learners and teachers are sometimes falsely driven by language-foci and forms, and generally forced to ignore Fluency and ultimate goals of messages.

Reality tells us that learners are always confused and limited in their chaos and clumsiness. They need teachers to navigate their paths and scaffold them as much as possible. I believe that a teacher's responsibility is to enforce competency and skills by engaging fluency drills. Fluency drills such as gambit activities and readers' theater are effective when new knowledge and concepts are introduced and bridged.

Fluency drills can be done through the four macro-skills--listening, reading, speaking and writing. These drills are meant to be repetitious and easy. The easier the activities, the more effective and enjoyable learners may experience. Not only repetition empowers practical performances, consciousness and wakefulness of information and experiences, but also links students with pragmatic discourse of reality of life.

Rehearsing new contents in different ways optimize learners' capability to think critically and to enrich personal arts of performing practical tasks, yet teachers need to guide them through communicative and cognitive approaches.

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Posted in: Learning Tips,Speaking,Teaching

Discourse Analysis in Practical Use

As a mechanic fact, Discourse analysis provides learners productive skills to maximally comprehend theoretical knowledge, and to ultimately enhance practical competence. Drilled deeper, Discourse analysis and variation of discourses concerning with spoken and written interfaces echo not only applied pre-existing knowledge and pedagogical tactics, but also assists learners to enrich threefold linguistic awareness, ability and proficiency. In a similar vein, I therefore agree with Massi’s research findings, centralizing on language learners, language educators, learning strategies, and teaching pedagogies. Sharing similar oasis, I would like to present further arguments and stands, philosophizing into the chest of productivity of Discourse analysis. The below strings of paragraphs will help clarify and validate the essentials of Discourse analysis in the field of teaching.

To a medium extent, I find that Discourse analysis has magnified how language is structured in different contexts of use. Accordingly, multiple aspects of grammar must be sliced down into small elements, and closely observed and analyzed. I approve that such methods empower language practitioners to more precisely prioritize concepts in syllabi and materialize for fields of usage. I personally see the values of engaging students in digging into different genres of language and take advantage to select and evaluate various discourses that are relevant to particular learners’ needs—spoken and written forms of discourses.

Concerning with writing discourse, I strongly believe that the ample knowledge of Discourse analysis will enable teachers to colorize and to precisely contextualize essential facets of writing texts, styles and text types. For example, by modeling different types of writing (Academic, popular, literary, personal, and official types of writing) students will have the opportunities to understand the underlying features and applicational contexts. At this level, I believe that language practitioners will deem to seek after different writing styles—formal or informal.

Another output application I wish to emphasize is Speaking discourse. Though Speaking is less discussed, it never changed the facts and the importance of speaking communication in real life. At this degree, I believe that teachers become more professional, systematic and communicative through knowledge of analysis of language discourses. The reasons are lexical choices and conversational analysis. Additionally, speech act theory and pragmatics play the key roles in enriching the ability of a teacher to process lessons more effectively. On top of this, teachers can use insights from such discourses to better evaluate their own learners’ performance in classroom tasks, such as pair work and group work. In a similar manner, language learners though such fields of learning and practices, will be able to by-pass errors and intimidations in language communication and interaction.

Another key point I must emphasize is Conversational analysis. It becomes crystal clear that conversational competence, though in case of everyday one, appears to be varied due to several important sociological aspects such as class, gender, age-group, and so on. Therefore, mere linguistic competence is not enough. In order to lead language practitioners to a higher ground, Halliday, M.A.K., and Raquiya Hasan (1989, p58-64) suggest that teachers must seek to fill such gaps by navigate students to understand about turn-taking, conversation opening and closing, new topic launching, topic shifting, and conversation probing and sustaining.

Finally, it is great news that most up-to-date study materials, designed by discourse analysts, sociolinguists, linguists and grammarians, come with lessons in discourses. I observe that those materials sound descriptive, informative, and more true to life. For examples, contemporary learners’ dictionaries, encyclopedia, and corpora provide adequate content and are more sensitive to contexts that meet the demands of speech and writing in language studies.

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Communicative Teaching

Some years ago, some teachers of English in Phnom Penh asked me to share secrets of effective teaching. They became like other thousand individuals who enjoy asking the same questions even when they understand the concepts of how to run the classroom business. Communicative teaching always appear to be the answer for questions of similar categories; however, the important question is 'who is being communicative? students or teachers?'

Providing students meaningful education can be a real challenge for many language teachers. Undeniably, the sole purpose of educating is to help enhance learners'thinking and doing skills. Thus, knowledge transfer from theoretical experience has to be integrated with practical experiences.

Service Learning

Engaging classroom knowledge with social and communal services is thought to be the dynamic tool, helping learners exercise and clarify missing gaps of imaginative learning. Experimental education is the quite a technical, yet doable approach to enforce reflection learning and applicational transfer. Meaningful community service with both academic and social instruction and reflection comprehensively enrich learning experience, civic responsibility, encouragement of lifelong civic engagement, and strengthen communities for the common good.

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Simple facts bluffingTeaching and Learning

The effectiveness of conceptualizing language in term that language users could grasp up to the extensive viability of language operation is not totally left up to language educators. It was almost a century that most educational stakeholders in both Western and Eastern world appreciated conservative classroom paradigms, such as Audiolingualism, Grammar-translation, and many Direct approaches. ‘Conservative’ here is another term that I must approach, that I believe to have set cultural, social and relational mindset in the field of educational history in both developed and developing countries.

Humankind no different from other types of planetary creatures is suggested, persuaded, colonized, governed, controlled, and commanded to undergo compromises, submissions and changes. I believe that theoretical and empirical discoveries on descriptive, correlational and experimental researches of learning and teaching were totally a natural fitness to their social-ecology. These untwistable facts basically evidence that in the early narrow world learners and educators were slaves of their social bounds, facilitative shortages and limitation in creative ideals. On the contrary, the modern world seeks to uplifts the value of humanity as it opens the front door to creativity, opportunity and round-table discussions on mystical aspects to quests of knowledge. The democratic world believes that everyone is creative, inventive and artistic in many ways. At this point, we as educators no longer oblige to spoonfeed learners in their learning process. That so-to-say, we take the roles as triggerers instead of shooters; Monitors instead of classroom rulers; motivators instead of dictators; Classroom supervisors rather than full-time service educators; outliners instead of narrators. Through the lenses of CLT techniques, the educational responsibility does not become a heavy yoke upon the educators’ shoulders, yet it helps balance social interaction and objectively helps enhance learners’ capacity to reach deep structure level of understanding language.

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Posted in: Strategies,Teaching

One angle from Behaviourism

Time becomes an undeniable matter for changes. Time is a comparative pathway bestowing motivation, initiation, examination, evaluation, justification, modification, and refinement to the inquiry of knowledge that work. Through time, cultures were influenced and shifted; lifestyles fashioned; Tools and facilities modernized; and noticeably humanity changed. B. F. Skinner with his respected Behaviorism theory may have conducted Operant Conditioning due to the factual, social and individual standard of typical life and behaviours. The past centuries oppressed people to comouflex with their social-ecology or else they would become extinct and lost in their bounds. People in the past were more like natural creatures who lived by coping up with system, discipline, rules, and patterns of nature. Socialism, Monarchism, and Communism were yet the absolute social structures in most countries. With these respects, humanity was more controlled and nourished within the bound of Behaviourism.

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Posted in: Teaching