Susan Brodar and her presentation about
" The Amazing Power of Language Games"
I was not online for the whole session of the webinar on 3rd August as I had problems with my internet and I had to watch part of the webinar this week. So I watched the recording of this interesting webinar by Susan Brodar today.
Who is Susan Brodar?
I had already appreciated this speaker in some online events and I had loved her presentation in MMVC17 last year. I could not but wait to see her. I could not interact with her but she left some nice links in the Moodle for chatting about the webinars and I am going to check them.
I followed a great presentation with lots of ideas: she said that " Repeation is the key word to learning" and I cannot but agree with her!! In her presention she gave a lot of examples of the many interesting activities she has created in order to make the lesson more interesting and also described how she got most of the students engaged while in the traditional way of working the Italian teachers she worked with had had difficulties.
She focussed on speaking, asking questions and also working on vocabulary!!
The questions that came to my mind were simple when I watched the recording: not everybody has the chance to work with a mother-tongue teacher who has such experience. The way she works is successful because she has created good tasks. The students are active and engaged and will achieve better results and marks later.
I wish she could work in my classes as the way she gets the students into speaking is very empowering! There were so many tips regarding the use of language items and how to work on vocabulary like working with the students who support the teacher for creating part of the content and this requires a second viewing!! I will have to check the recording again!!
During the presentation she mentioned some tools which I need to learn more about.
Susan uploaded a list of useful websites so I will have to check which ones might help me devolop activities in class and as a reinforcement.
This is my mission for the next months: I will have to find a way for teaching better since I know the situation in most of my classes needs a lot of motivation and new ways or strategies.
My question about a new research is about the way games can help reluctant learners. Games can be fun but they require a trained teacher. I will have to learn from people who have been successful like Susan Brodar.
Thanks to her great tips!!
This is my video where I am reflecting on the webinar and sharing my ideas, how I felt and what I liked in Susan's presentation. I used a new tool to record it- Loom
Thank you very much Tiziana for your wonderful words. I am flattered but want you to know that despite my great efforts to continuously research new ways of engaging & motivating students, there are times when also my students do not have the desired results. This is partly due to personal traits of individual students who may be motivated & engaged, who learn to speak & communicate well but then perform badly in traditional written tests where they may make basic mistakes, almost due to boredom with the testing system I feel, when they are perfectly capable if interacting with others in a foreign language - which is our ultimate aim. So despite exercising continuous self-criticism in order to improve my teaching, I have learnt to accept that all does not depend on me. Thank you again.
RispondiEliminaThanks Susan,
Eliminasince Blogger has changed the way they notify comments I could only get access to yours last week and since I started school I was busy without a good internet connection I cannot always check what people say or write.
Mistakes can be negative when learning but if we focus on speaking and get learners involved in what we are doing we can manage. In Italy too many educators focus on grammar and mistakes and learners are demotivated but we do need to admit that also the best teachers sometimes do not have good results in tests. I will continue follow your interesting webinars as you have learnt and reflected on what went wrong.