Where Are Your Manners? ++ Game Day

Salam and Hi to all,

So I guess my writing is a bit sequential ain't it? Because I just want to sum up the whole week into one entry...tehee :D  

We started the week with the first chapter in their text-book which would be the MOST LOVABLE topic for all teachers/lecturers/instructors!~

As the title goes: "Where Are Your Manners". Basically this chapter discusses about the declining of manners among tertiary level students, so the examples would be from actual current real life happenings. It mentions about students coming to class late and do not have the common sense to apologize, keeping quiet in class [i olls terasa tau uolls] or chattering while the instructor is teaching, playing with their fancy smartphones and gadgetry, so on so forth. The good thing about this chapter is, I can use it against them whenever I feel they are doing the same thing that annoys me after this. Kudos to the team who came up with this chapter in the book :D

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Game Day

I wanted to test their knowledge on certain aspects of English without having to go through the boring old stuff from primary school so I came up with an idea to do it in a form of game. During the weekend, I cut the A4 paper into small sized pieces and wrote down questions. YES, MANUALLY [huhuhuhu]. I bought jajan [snacks] as a form of reward because I know, their motivation to participate would increase because of positive reinforcement [hey, aren't we all like that??? :D]

Questions varied from tenses, spelling, pronunciation, idioms, prepositions and also singular/plural and I divided them into three categories; EASY, MODERATE and CHALLENGING. I put them into three different envelopes [detailed explanations for future reference :p] and conducted my first game for FKE students. What I wanted was; everyone to answer so I called up one by one to the front and they had to choose an envelope, I pick a question and they have to answer it, correctly. So we can see that sometimes, they make silly simple mistakes but I truly appreciate their effort and participation in the activity. For the second class, I changed a bit where I told them to get into groups of 4-6 but the same rule applies because I want everyone to attempt answering a question, once. I also asked them to jolt down the words that they don't know so they shouldn't be making the same mistakes over and over again in the future. Got one more class to go for this game. I really hope they enjoyed the game and drill some new words into their minds, inshaAllah :D

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For research class, we have covered until research methodology and now I am waiting for their first draft which comprises of; Introduction, Literature Review and also Methodology. I hope they have understood whatever being presented and explained in class and come for consultations so that they won't get lost in the process :) I'm not worried about these students because they come from the most toughest faculty in this university and they do their work well [hopefully]. Let's see whether they really understood what they have done...ngehehe

Till next week,

KEEP CALM AND TEACH ON~~~

One-Monthsary

Alhamdulillah,

I managed to survive up until one month and hopefully for many more months ahead inshaAllah :)


This week [week 4] marks the end of impromptu speech assessment which carries 10% from the overall marks for this subject. Only one class left with a set of students who are not yet finished.

Overall impression by me:

There's a gap between those who really know English well and those who experience a bit of a difficulty in apprehending simple rules of English, for example; singular vs plural, tenses, pronunciation of basic words.

It's a bit tricky because I need to pay extra attention to those who understand less but at the same time, not keeping the better ones bored. Nevertheless, I need to come up with lots of activities so that they can brush up their English, like on a 360 degree scale. Pray for me!

I want to leave an impact to these people so that they will be prepared with the real world. They need not remember me but they must have a little bit of motivation once they face the real THING. From what I heard listening to their speeches, some of them are still living in a fairy-tale and that is not so good.

On another note, I gave a second chance to re-DO the speech if anyone was not satisfied with their performances. I didn't reveal their first mark and turns out, voila! All of those who wanted a re-DO, managed to get higher marks than before. Congratulations to them!

I don't know what they think of me though. Maybe I'm the most boring-est teacher they have ever encountered but yeah....DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE?  *vain me iz vain*


Having to face these people, men especially, is a tough challenge for me. I'm awkward being amongst them but I try really hard to keep cool in front of them. I think that is my X factor...pretending to be calm and cool while inside.....gahh!

Next week is another new chapter. Not sure whether I want to straight away start on chapter two or do some beneficial game-related activities with them.....game lah kot kan?

That's all for Y1 students....Moving on with Y2 class, we have started on Literature Review and the group I assigned to present did a great job. The reason I made them present is because I wanted to see whether they could understand what they read or not so I just interjected in certain aspects. Added a little bit more and asked them (all the students) some questions and all of them seem like they understood. Let's see the outcome in their first draft...ho..ho


We will start on Research Methodology next week and hopefully after that, they can start with their first draft and instrumentation, inshaAllah. I like this class because they understand things fast...hi..hi...senang hidup i olls yg xde pengalaman ni. It's a good thing the one who taught me R.M was a very good lecturer!

Till then,

KEEP CALM AND TEACH ON~~