Homework 5: A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

Last Dance in How I Met Your Mother

How I Met Your Mother - Ted's last dance from Jonathan C on Vimeo.

Response to Chapter 8: Learning in a Community

The ability to work by oneself and with others are equally important. However, in the traditional way of education in Taiwan, working by oneself is emphasized more in the secondary school. Students who study in a competitive environment might regard others as their imaginative enemies, so teaching others are seen as a waste of time for studying. During the process of studying, they ignore the importance of collaboration and cooperation which they will encounter later at work in society. Students have more opportunities to work with others in the university in Taiwan. For example, study group is a very effective way to discuss literature: every group member discusses the plot and his or her interpretation to the plot. Sometimes there are some different interpretations to the same plot with reasonable explanations. When I took educational linguistics at graduate school in the US, we were required to form a book circle for the discussion of Pinker’s book “The Stuff of Thoughts.” At first, everyone just posted their reflection on the assigned chapter, but the professor encouraged us to response to each other’s post. Therefore, the discussion was getting more interesting. Since “Stuff of Thoughts” was not an easy book for international students because Pinker uses examples in American daily life to illustrate the linguistic concepts. I posted some of my doubts about the examples in the chapter, and my American group member would answer my questions with her native speaker’s knowledge. Sometimes, I also gave some examples of Chinese to expand the examples Pinker gives in the chapter. In the discussion, we were trying to share what we knew to those who didn’t know, so that in the end everyone would expand his/ her knowledge. In the Teaching Second Language Reading class, we worked in pair to give peer review feedback to each other’s reading project. It was easier to praise than to give constructive suggestions, and it was also easier to criticize than to give explanations of criticism in a polite manner. Therefore, I spent quite a time writing the feedback that I hoped to be helpful. While giving peer review feedback, I learned to communicate with others while giving my honest opinions; while receiving feedback, I learned to accept others’ suggestions. Sometimes, my partner seemed not to understand the points I was trying to make and gave a suggestion that showed his misunderstanding. I would explain to him verbally again and revised my sentences to be more readable. Receiving peer review feedback motivated to write my papers for my readers (the professor and the partner). Learning with others always makes learning more practical, inspiring, and fun.

Response to Chapter 7: Scientia Potentia Est

Some Chinese citizens reported to the Chinese authorities earlier that the queries in Google China led to the results of pornography. Therefore, the China government forces Google, the world’s largest technology company, to block the non-Chinese websites in the search engine in China. Before this case, Microsoft Hotmail and micro-blogging site Twitter were also shut in China because of reporting the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. However, China’s online censorship cannot deny the fact that information is exploded in the twenty-first century. In fact, it is not easy to control the source of information since it is produced in a very fast speed in various forms, such as books, Internet, and media. Yet not every piece of information is constructive to knowledge, the product of people’s consciously constructing the information they need. In this chapter, the authors’ indication of Francis Bacon’s “information as power” is no longer valid for now, since everyone can easily find the sources of information. What Bacon really means is not information, but knowledge that endows people with power. Those who have information without knowing how to use it effectively are like those who have money without knowing how to spend it wisely. As a result, people need to develop the ability to sort out the appropriate information for their knowledge use. The Latin maxim “Scientia Potentia Est,” paraphrased as “knowledge is power,” is verified when people know how to manage the information.

China orders Google to block websites
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/business/story/0,28124,25668043-36418,00.html

Response to Chapter 9: Assessment

Students are motivated by tests under a text-oriented learning environment. The purpose of learning is to get good grades in the exam, just as what the authors said to the traditional assessment practices, “if it can’t be tested, it isn’t worth teaching.” Assessment is placed before teaching and learning. However, students’ motivation of learning disappears after finishing the exam, and their passion for learning will dwindle in the long term. People should be life-long learners to encounter the fast changing world in the twenty-first century, and teachers are aware of the importance of teaching higher-level thinking. Nevertheless, most secondary school teachers worry that the training of students’ high-level thinking might hinder their test performance, which the authors consider an unfounded fear. The authors suggest that there should be various forms of assessment to measure students’ real performance instead of only one standardized test judging students’ ability to recall what they have learned. In recent years, passing the college entrance exam is not the only way to get into university in Taiwan. Students can also apply for university when they perform well in certain fields at school. Therefore, even if the join college entrance exam is still the major gate-keeping assessment, teachers need to educate students’ attitude toward assessment by prioritizing learning before assessment: “if it’s worth learning, it’s worth assessment.” Next, teachers should consider using various forms of measuring students’ ability. Giving feedback from multiple sources of audience, one of the forms of assessment the authors recommend, is very effective for me when I was a college student. I was motivated to write more whenever I received the professors’ comment and peer critique. I was shy to speak up in class, but in writing I felt that my voice had been heard and understood (though they do not necessarily agree with my argument in writing). I had not found the passion to learn until then. It was a pity that this moment came so late that my learning experience was driven by the tests before college. Consequently, it is important that secondary school teachers should try to evaluate students’ performance individually rather than ranking them by the test scores. The types of assessment can influence students’ motivation and quality of learning.

Response to Chapter 6: Note-making Skills in Literacy

Literacy refers to not only the literate ability to use the letters to read and write, but also the cognitive ability to encode meanings and decode symbolic forms. Students’ literacy is enhanced in the instruction of reading comprehension, the ability to understand, recall, summarize, and synthesize the main ideas they have read. Teachers can teach the second/ foreign language learners the process of reading comprehension explicitly (from eye fixation of words to decoding) and help them monitor their strategies to increase reading comprehension. Making notes is one of the strategies that teachers can teach students to improve reading comprehension. Making notes highly emphasizes the ability to identify the important points and paraphrase or summarize them. Teachers can ask second/ foreign language learners to share their notes in an academic paper in a group, so they can compare and contrast each other’s note-making method. Students can learn from each other to improve their note-making styles. For example, different students summarize the same paragraph in different ways in their notes. Teachers can ask students to explain why they include these points in the summary while others do not, or how they include the same points in different ways. Students can vote for the best summary of a paragraph and discuss why they think the winner’s summary is superior to others and why others’ summaries fail to convey the gist effectively. Recognizing that students need to learn beyond the ability to read and write, teachers need to sharpen students’ ability to read and write to think and learn.

Response to Chapter Five: Problem-solving Activities

Designing a problem-solving activity helps students undergo the information-extending and information-rearranging processes and strengthen their memory of the knowledge they use in the processes. Teachers use their creativity to design the problem that stimulates students’ critical thinking and activates their schemata for valid solutions. I experienced a problem-solving class when I was taking Chinese in university. The professor asked each group of students to come up with different ways of presenting the reading for discussion in every class. Therefore, the problem is posed: in what way students can present this idea and why this will work or will not work. One time, when everyone got stuck in thinking of a new way to discuss the classic novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, our group just had the eureka moment: each group drew a plot diagram of the novel and explained why they labeled some parts of the plot as the rising action, the turning point, the climax, and the falling action. We applied this for our reading, and it successfully elicited students’ discussion of how they interpreted the plot. The problem-solving teaching is also crucial in the language classroom. The ultimate goal of learning English is to communicate with others effectively. Therefore, teachers can design a problematic scenario to help students practice their communicative skills in English. For instance, in the first class, the teacher asks students to introduce themselves as if they were in a job interview. After listening to each other’s self-introduction, students can share what are their impressions to others. If other students’ impression is not the image the target student wishes to convey (there might be some misunderstanding in the communication), he can ask them why they think so (what he has said or what he has done that lead to this impression) and he can also think of another way (with different attitudes, tones, or wording) to present himself, which might lead to another impression. The final goal is to help students present themselves to create an impression that they desire in a job interview. The purpose of this class is to improve students’ communicative skills when they encounter misunderstanding in the conversation.

Response to Chapter 4

The narrative and expository modes of discourse construct people’s ways of viewing this world: how people give reasonable interpretations to their experiences and how they use evidence to define the truth. The narrative discourse is a mode of thought that is essential in teaching and learning, and this is not only applied in literature, but also in the real-life situations. Showing some film clips on the same topic is one of the teaching methods that teachers can use to teach students to see the real-life situation in different ways. After watching the film clips, teachers need to ask some significant study questions to prompt students to think. For example, an ESL teacher wants to teach “culture” under a multicultural setting where students coming from different countries and trying to adjust to the new culture. The important issues related to this theme might be cultural identity and culture shock. The teacher can show the film clip of “The Namesake,” which reveals the conflict between two generations of Indian immigrants in the US and the identity crisis of the new generation: whether he belongs to the US culture or his native Indian culture. There are several scenes in the film that depict the shift of identity (the main character’s change of his name). The teacher can require students to identify these scenes and ask them why the main character changes his name twice and what the meaning of his original name is. After the discussion, students can talk about what cultural conflicts they encounter and why they encounter these. By so doing, students do not just study the definition of culture and the phases of culture shock, but they observe the film character’s situation, associate the character’s experience with theirs and try to find meanings of these scenes. After students are aware of what they have been through and why, they will be able to predict what similar situations will happen in the future and know how to react to the situations accordingly.

Response to Chapter 3

The FACTS of design is a framework for teachers to design a class with learning opportunities for students. The authors discuss some interesting electronic technological tools for education. I found the computer graphic programs particular interesting to me. Graphics, the representation of concepts, work well for visual learners. One type of images the computer graphic programs can assist learners to create is organizational images, which can show the connection, sequence, and hierarchy of information (p. 53). I tried to make mind maps (graphic organizers) by hand to synthesize the information from different readings for Teaching Second Language Reading class last semester. However, my handwriting made it hard to insert something that I came up with later to the fixed branch structure. Buzan (2006) introduces the Computer Aided Thinking (CAT) and the examples from MindGenius as tools for creating mind maps. This software allows note-takers to enter the central image or keyword as the main theme first and then make branches as the related points (see the picture above). It will be easier to make changes because this program will help structure the new branches. This software can not only organize the information from the readings, it can also be used as a brainstorming outline for writing. The teacher can help students visualize their thinking by using this mind map creator or the teacher can organize the knowledge in a mind map to help students learn. Although some learners can create very good mind maps, this CAT program makes the process more efficient. This is a great tool for teaching and learning.

Buzan, T. & Buzan, B. (2006). Computer Mind Mapping. The Mind Map Book. BBC: UK.

Response to Chapter 2

Chapter two discusses the instructional principles in a highly student-centered classroom, where students construct the knowledge and the teacher facilitates their process of construction. However, students in Taiwan need to spend time adjusting to this mode. In the exam-oriented educational environment in Taiwan, students before college usually learn in an efficiency model, which promotes the teacher-centered classroom. In this teaching method, students can learn fast as long as they are willing to follow the teacher’s instruction step by step. Performing well on a test is their motivation and goal of learning. When they enter university, they suddenly are left to think on their own and the teacher evaluates their way of thinking. Most students feel insecure when they have to construct the knowledge by themselves without the authority of the teacher. They also feel uncertain when they raise their opinions in public. This phenomenon reflects that students are not confident to learn by themselves. Therefore, the teacher should try to bridge the gap between the secondary and post-secondary education by teaching critical thinking. For example, in a language classroom, when students are equipped with basic linguistic knowledge, the teacher can start helping them express their opinions. When I went to the TESOL conference in Denver this year, Ms. Ana Wu introduced an interesting way to teach critical thinking in speaking and writing by showing some video clips about animated mime on YouTube in class. After watching the mime, the teacher can prompt students to describe and interpret the scene and the plot in the clip. There is no definite answer as long as students can support their interpretation with evidence in the clip. This will be a good starter for students to express their opinions to less serious topics before they discuss academic subjects, such as literature.

Note. The YouTube video here is an example of the clip for teaching critical thinking.

Response to Comprehension, Coherence and Strategies in Hypertext and Linear Text by Foltz, Peter W.

Foltz compares linear text and hypertext in terms of reading strategies and comprehension in his article. When the form of information is converted from linear text to hypertext, the writer needs to be aware of the coherence between each piece of information to create effective hyperlinks for reading comprehension. Hypertext is superior to linear text because it can insert various links to the background knowledge or supplementary information related to the article. In the author’s experiment, the more elaborate coherent nodes and mapping in the modified version of hypertext are very helpful for readers’ comprehension and easier for them to find the information they want. It also helps the readers to synthesize the information efficiently. However, the task of making coherent hypertext is not easy and I doubt the possibility of making one that suits every reader’s need. Sometimes it is hard to anticipate what specific background knowledge the readers need. Also, some links might lead to the information that is independent from the context in the article. Therefore, choosing which information to be included is crucial in creating hypertext.

Response to Designing Metacognitive Activities by Lin, Xiaodong

The metacognitive activities at school in Lin’s article reflect the needs of the society in twenty-first century: as self problem-solvers, people need the ability to use strategies consciously and to monitor the effectiveness of their strategy use. I first encountered the concept of metacognition in “Teaching Second Language Reading,” a course I took last semester. Metacognition in reading comprehension refers to readers’ application of reading strategies, their awareness of the application, and their modification of the strategies. I did a self-study project on note-taking skills that facilitate reading comprehension. In order to improve my note-taking skills for better reading comprehension, I interviewed my classmates their note-taking skills, implemented some in my reading task, and examined the effectiveness of my new note-taking skills. The process of metacognition monitoring occurred in my self-study of note-taking skills, but metacognition was never made explicitly in the classroom in my previous educational experience for the lack of self-awareness and teachers’ constant encouragement to this. Some technology programs discussed in this article can solve this problem. For example, a computer-simulation program prompts students to explain what they decide to do and why they do this in designing the biology experiments (p. 27). This kind of program helps students develop their strategies. However, even if the computer programs are getting more customized to suit each individual’s needs, it might not be able to evaluate students’ response to the prompts. Students sometimes do not explain the reason of their decision-making clearly, so teachers need to cooperate with the technology programs and intervene accordingly to help students elaborate more on their explanation. Or, this could be a possible direction for the technology program designers to create more personal and interactive programs about metacognition.