COMPARISON AND CONTRAST OF THEORY AND OBSERVATIONS In order to achieve success in teaching students with a learning disability like dyslexia, it is necessary to use different approaches and strategies. In the context I have observed, the teacher did not seem to use accommodations that help the struggling students very frequently, but the same for all. She always put special emphasis on oral communication, allowing all students to participate, making the lesson dynamic and engaging but somewhat disorganized, and not always achieving the results expected. Additionally to the observations in the classroom, to gather information about my topic I asked the teacher samples of written work of the students that presented Dyslexia. To begin with, it is beneficial for dyslexic students to have some sort of structure in their daily routine, for example the date written in one corner of the board, the layout of the lesson on the other corner, as a way of lower their anxiety and anticipating what is going to be next.
Silent reading is an effective way for student because, as stated by Mercedes. C. Tiong, “Silent reading has benefits the user as it provides them a better understanding of whatever they are reading”. It is because the meaning of the text is more important to silent readers than the way words are pronounced. On the other hand Students who silently read their learning materials finish their work much quicker in contrast with those who use oral reading. Whereas as a student who has an accent to read orally in the class, and other students are going to be distracted from the actual text as they listen to the new accent.
Adding to that, Doff mentions that “using English for chatting to the class, for giving instructions and explanations” will provide students with very useful listening practice. Moreover, games can be applied in the class before finishing or starting the lesson. If teachers have enough time, they can let class play games at the end of the lesson, otherwise, they can use for the beginning new lessons to review. The advantage of doing these types of listening activities is that it makes students more interested in listening, especially when teachers divide the class into teams as competition remarkably increases students’
The things that you might discover in your classroom are the behaviors of the children in the classroom. The student might show poor attitude towards other peers and might not cooperate when doing assignments in classroom. When doing group work you may ask the students who he/she would like to work with and practice ways to responses in a positive manner. Another one is observing the social interactions amongst the students in the classroom. Some might be too shy or doesn’t appear to want any friends.
Listening comprehension is one of the important skills that learners must master for communicating in English. Without good listening comprehension skill, learners will find difficulties when they engage in the daily conversation using English. However, eventhough every learners knows that listening comprehension is an important skill, many of them do not feel determined to hone it. The possible cause might be the tedious learning atmosphere in the class. Being a student who attended the listening comprehension class, I felt the atmosphere of learning was dreary.
A teacher standing in front of a classroom and giving definitions and examples can be boring to pupils. Children have a short attention span therefore a teacher has to interchange to keep the child’s interest. Simply he/she must have other means of connecting with their pupils. So they would have the pupils think constructively about the topic or even to grasp the concept of the lesson. Even if it is by his/her facial expression, change of voice or just by showing action.
To illustrate, while introducing or practicing the new information, let’s say Passive Voices, students may face some mistakes which are not about the mechanics of Passive Voice structure, but another off topic grammatical structure, such as, let’s say Conditionals. At this point, teacher ignores such mistakes not to let the students move out of the topic. However, it means that the practice contexts can be a bit forced. In addition, Production stage, which is meant to be the most efficient stage for language transference is even narrow as well, because students are monitored only from the point of the main focus of the lesson. In another saying, production activities are designed to reproduce language samples offered in Presentation and Production stages.
The stress level of people at work also tends to increase without showing. Barriers at the workplace may include cultural, emotional, language, physical, and personality factors which might hinder a healthy communication atmosphere. Language may be considered as an essential tool to communicate. A particular foreign teacher who was posted to our school finds it difficult to communicate with colleagues since she lacks Maltese. To help the situation, teachers switch to talk in English whenever she is in the staffroom so that she can understand what is being said.
Students will become more engaged in interaction through group work. Teachers also have enough time in observation rather than directing teaching (Royka, 2002). By listening to each other the children are embedded in a living language sphere; even if the speech is full of mistakes, they still absorb a lot of language features that can not be mechanically taught through drilling. That is why the teacher should assign roles to maintain a group cohesion in a particular context. Also, by working in a team and having a chance to observe classmates from the side, with the teacher guiding them from time to time, every student has a chance for the better understanding of himself, namely – his strengths and weaknesses.
Real group practicing in a language class helps students to remember easier rather than listening to examples given by the teacher. There is more collaboration amongst learners and they find creative and different ways to accomplish the task set for them. This method promotes personal learning skills such as problem solving, critical thinking and communication skills and sharing of ideas. Leo Jones (2007) stated in a student centered classroom is a place where the needs of all the students, group and individual are considered and not where the students decide what they want to do and learn. Some students prefer working in groups as they feel more confident and less anxious and find it easier to voice their ideas and