Active Listening and (Active Reading)

Hello Everyone!

Which one do you like the most? Listen or talk? Hahahha Just answer it in your heart.  👀

Well, today I will discuss about active listening. Why? Because in active listening we can learn about critical thinking. 👩

Active listening is commonly used in three main fields:

• Counseling and training
• Business
• Conflict resolution

Active Listening is a situation where it is extremely important for the listener to fully hear what other speakers are saying. This is important for professional development which requires quality exchanges.

Active listening helps us, the educators, to fully understand what someone else is expressing before responding. It really helps us to help others gain insight, to practice ourselves in giving feedback, to offer suggestions, clarify information, and think critically.

“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.”

Stephen R. Covey.

Here are some techniques we can use:

1.       Use your full attentions to read the posts. Do not be distracted while reading. Fully present, clear your mind. Read out loud to concentrate more.

2.       Reflect before responding.

Being ACTIVE LISTENERS requires SELF-AWARENESS.

“Is it something needs to be said?”

3.       Make sure you understood what other person wrote. Be careful to express what you want to say!

It will indicate:

a)      We have completely understand what others said, or

b)      We are worried that the other person may not be receptive to our words.

Tips:

·         Clarify “Correct me if I’m wrong, but ….”

·         Restate/ Summarize “Let’s see if I’m clear about this…”

·         Emotional topic “It seems that you….”

4.       Recognize the emotional side

Instead of REPEATING, RECOGNIZE the emotional impact.

“That sounds really scary….”

5.       Offer Alternatives

“Would you agree with this idea…..?”

UNDERSTANDING or TAKE other person’s idea FURTHER

You show them implications

(Meaning/Outcomes of what they’re saying)

6.       Share your P.O.V, knowledge, or experience.

“I have also experienced this, when….”

7.       Request more information. This can make discussion more meaningful.

“Can you tell me about your experience?”

“NO MATTER WHAT OUR TECHNIQUE WE USE,

BE RESPECTFUL, HONEST, AND OPEN!”

So guys, try to get your students know about this. These techniques will help them be more critical towards what other people say. There is one activity from RELO US Embassy that is explained by Mrs. Najwa Abdullah, that can be applied within these techniques. I call it as “Responding Ball”.

Steps:

1. Ask your students to make a circle. Then explain the techniques of active listening briefly.
2.  Bring a real ball in, which have been covered by attached words on the surface. The words are: define, ask questions, agree, clarify, disagree, challenge, and summarise.
3. First, explain them to concentrate and fully understand what other people say or what the statement shown says, because they have to respond whenever they get the ball. They can choose to ask questions to the previous speaker, or to clarify previous statement, and etc. However, teacher will show a statement first on the screen, and student who will get the first ball, has to define, and then give the ball to her/his friend to do the next response.
4.  Do this activity, until all students speak.
5.  Guide the time. Make sure there is no student who dominates the discussion.
6. Remember to also clarify and summarize this session so that students have a right understanding.

By doing this activity, I believe, students will learn how to respond right to every saying.

Depth of Reflection Rubric

Depth of Reflection Rubric

Hi. As a teacher, doing a reflection is a must. You can learn to evaluate yourself to be better day by day. Moreover, in order to develop intercultural competence, we need to think and reflect briefly on lived experiences with culture and intercultural encounters. The question is how would we know that we think and reflect deeply? Below, I attach the explanation in pdf and video provided by US Embassy.

Now, you can try first to write your own reflection of teaching today. You can write about you and your classroom.

Now, please see the pdf rubric from E-Teacher. You can read while watching this video.

After this, you can start putting them into practice:

1.       Choose your own reflection.

2.       Divide the text into sections. Each section should describe one basic idea. This could be as little as one sentence or as much as a paragraph or two.

3.       Look at the rubric and the descriptions it contains. What is the highest number you can assign the section of text?

4.       Repeat this for every section of the text.

Here, I will give you my depth of reflection about “Cultural Introductions – me and my classroom”.

This rubric can also be applied and used for your students. ;-D

Happy Practicing!

NB: If you don’t understand, feel free to give comments.

Cheers,

Stefani.

Intercultural Competence

Hi!

You are back again with Stefani. This week I am going to discuss about Intercultural Competence which plays a very important role in shaping critical thinking. But before that, I would like to remind you that you can put comments in this section so that other teachers can learn from you. I would like to make my blog as a tunnel to bless others with experiential learning method, where we use people’s experience as a foundation of our learning.

Okay! Let’s start!

Each of us often hears about culture. Can you define what culture is? For me, culture is background information about someone which makes them special and identifies who they are. However, Anthropologist, John. H. Bodley, defined culture as, “What people think, make, and do (1994, p. 22). This definition is developed further to be 3P model of culture by Frank (2014). The 3P’s are perspectives, practices, and products.

Let’s talk about them one by one.

Perspectives describe “what member of a culture, think, feel, and value (Frank, 2014, p.3.). Ideas and believes exist in society belong to this model. Perspectives make people do appropriate and inappropriate behavior. For example like, how your students call you in a class.

Perspectives shape Practices. Practices include traditions and typical behaviors in a culture. For example: gestures when people are talking, the situation of formal and informal, how people wear dress, how direct or indirect people are communicating.

Products talk about clothing, music, literature and food. Food is the most common product that comes out when people talk about culture.

 “The more people engage in the traditions and ways of living of their culture, the more that culture's perspectives, practices, and products are reinforced.”

AE E-Teacher Program

Culture is dynamic not static. The 3P’s can change over time. Therefore, it is very important for people to be able to interact to other people who have different cultures from theirs. This ability to interact is called Intercultural Competence. It is needed to avoid misunderstanding people from different cultures. By this ability, people can be flexible in their thinking and realize that people are complex. On the other hand, to see people in ways that are simple and not complex is to stereotype people.

In this world, people have different level of intercultural competence. That’s why it requires an ability to think critically about differences.

EFL Teachers need to prepare students to face intercultural encounters. In order to do that, students need to know themselves as a cultural being. They have to understand how their own culture shapes them.

This intercultural competence is an ongoing process which is needed to be trained continually.

Now guys, it is your turn to start thinking about your classroom. I believe that as teacher you create your own classroom culture.

You can answer these questions through comments below to reflect to your own class. Please write your name after your description. :

1.  What is culture in your own words?
2. Now start to think and reflect about your students in your class (their age, the size of the class) an object that you use daily in your classroom, a motto that you always use in class that guides your work with students, and the reason why you use those objects and motto.

I will answer the question number 2 as an example for you:

I teach Business English to university students between 18 to 21 years old. The classes consist of 30 to 40 students. My students are so eager to learn English though sometimes the terms in the subject are difficult. These students are hungry to master the language.

Most of the students in my class come from the suburbs area around the city. They face difficulty in speaking skill because they say that they do not have partners in practicing. Regarding this, in class I usually bring laptop, speaker, and a bunch of videos to class. Before I start the lesson, I play the video as the introduction of what we will do today. Otherwise, I play it in the middle of the lesson as an example of the discussion. I do this because I want them to be engaged with the real culture of the native speaker. There will be a time also when I bring pictures to class and ask them to discuss the picture in simple games.

Every time there is an activity in my class, I always answer with "Wow. Very Nice. Good job guys!" or I will say "You can do it guys!" I use these words because I want to encourage them. I always explain to them that there is nothing impossible for those who always try the best.

I use these videos and words in class because I always attempt to create positive environment where students are not scared to learn instead they enjoy the English class. When a child listens to a positive word in a positive place, her spirit will be positive and ready to learn something new. I want it to be their culture wherever they go, to respond something positively.

Thanks!

Stefani.

AE-Teacher - Winter 2018 Section 3 - Integrating Critical Thinking into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting

Hola Everyone,

I have just finished my 3-month school from American English E-Teacher Program, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs - U.S. Department of State. This was a winter class of 2018. I majored on  Integrating Critical Thinking into the Exploration of Culture in an EFL Setting.
This class focuses on exploration of culture in helping students engage in authentic situations to develop the ability in understanding a variety of cultures

I will update my writing every Monday to discuss all topics that I had learned in 3 months. While reading my blog, I hope everyone of you will be able to:

1. Define intercultural competence
2. Define critical thinking
3. Develop an increased understanding of experiental learning and its elements: observation, inquiry, multiple-perspective analysis, and self reflection
4. Teach intercultural competence
5. Learn and teach critical thinking
6. Analyze EFL textbooks' treatment of culture
7. Develop your ability to learn and teach the skills of active listening and empathy
8.  Develop your own assumption about the teaching of culture in your context
9. Create lesson plans which integrate cultural learning and critical thinking
10. reflect on and critically analyze your lessons

Below every writing that I make, you can also join by adding your experience in class or comments so that everyone will learn from you.

So, see you next Monday! Can't wait to share more with you. Stay connected!

Stefani Ekky.