module 1- reflection

1 What did you learn about understanding student understanding?

This module shows something that teacher may ignore in class teacher – student understand. It’s natural for teachers to pay attention if their students understand or not. But this module shows that actually when students may not really understand what teachers have taught them until they are required to explain and conclude by themselves. They may be able to recite some key words or main idea from their teachers, but their misconceptions will reveal as the interview goes on. In my own interview, my interviewee seemed to follow the scientific textbooks and gave me the answers, especially about people sustaining their lives by machines. I think I should have asked him more tricky questions, and tried to lead him to think about “living and nonliving” in other aspects (e.g. is human’s spirit a living thing or not) But honestly I was not sure about the result of doing that – it may lead him to say his “own” opinions, not from the science book; or it may end up a disaster.

2 What did you learn about how well produced audio can impact your listening experience?

In this module, there is a very good video showing the power of adding music in one lecture. Music – pause, volume, repeat – these all help to catch audience’s attention and demonstrate the theme of the lecture. In this module we’ve also learned some basic skills to record audio file and edit them by deleting unnecessary information and changing the volume, etc.

3 How can you apply this to your students' learning in your classroom?

I think for my future teaching, I should pay more attention to student understanding by following up “why is it” to check if they really understand. If necessary, I can launch some group discussion about the topic of the class. Also, I can ask some students to come to the front and answer the rest students’ questions. These all help me to know if students really understand or not. Besides, I think I will use more audios for my future classes, especially for my language classes. I can make some audios and put them online, and students will finish listening assignment online. I can also teach students to make audios, as a part of reading assignment. Audio technology makes online language teaching more applicable.