Reflection | Anneke

Reflection blog assignment

What have you learned about becoming proficient in English by writing a blog? 
I did become more proficient in English, because by means of this blog I took more notice of the mistakes I make/made in writing and speaking. Of course I’m still making mistakes now, but I’ve detected lots of them and tried to come up with sources which could improve these. After all these weeks I’ve learned that it is very important knowing where you should work on when you want to govern you speaking, reading, listening or vocabulary. I you don’t know what mistakes you make, you will never be able to improve these. Also, it is significance to know what you can do and what you already manage, because it makes one proud and gives them motivation to perfect these and more difficult to obtain skills. What I do now is that after all these weeks posting blogs, I did improve my writing and therefore also my vocabulary a lot without even noticing it. Reading, listening and speaking have improved but not as good as writing and vocabulary. These subjects have been improved by looking and using recourses like, British series, reading books, reading BBC news, the guardian and CPE practice tests.  

How could you do that with your pupils? 

Making my pupils more proficient would include much practice. Simultaneously, making them aware of what they still need to improve and what they already govern. As a teacher I would give them feedback on their writing and order them to improve the errors by extra exercises, which I have or will gather for them. As a result, my pupils know what they need to improve and are going to better these in instant.  If a big part of my pupils have trouble with the same subject I could adjust parts of my lessons explaining the subjects they are not fully familiar with. Not only can I do this with writing, but also with reading. Looking at speaking and listening, I would use a different approach. Regarding speaking, I would let my pupils read aloud in class and let the listeners take notes of what is said wrongly. Concerning listening, I would probably let them listen to videos and as exercise summarizing these. Expanding vocabulary would be done by reading books and let them learn the words mentioned in the school books.