Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Can I audit TOEIC's accounts?

We started as usual with their homework, quizzes 5 and 6. I think if I go with this book in the future, I may only assign one unit per week. I am also thinking now that one unit a class may be enough. I could try something like the following: Start off correcting work, repetition drills for pronunciation, then move on to the unit in question, its mini-quiz and finally vocabulary study, a sort of self-study component. I think the final component may especially be useful because for many of the students in this class, vocabulary seems to be the biggest challenge for them, and so would be vital to focus on this as much as possible. Another thing, too, that I should look into is a smaller version of the book. What I mean is that some publishers will provide a split version of a particular textbook. The book I am using now has 28 units and considering I am only at unit 7, there is definitely no way of finishing the whole book, despite my ambitious attempt at doing two units per class, something which I now know is quite much for the students. I think therefore that a split version (14 units) would be more logical for a 15-week course. That reminds me – I still have to confirm whether or not I will be teaching this class in the spring because if I am I should start thinking about the class and what I will do in it. Of course, I should not forget this semester either for I am only half way through it!

After finishing each quiz, I had them repeat the vocabulary after me for pronunciation practice. I also told them again to circle any words they don’t know and to look them up later. We then continued with unit 6’s mini-test before moving on to unit 7. In this unit, which focuses on part 7 of the TOEIC, we looked at the typical question types found therein and which ones to start with. The four types ranked easiest to hardest are 1) specific information (positive), 2) vocabulary, 3) main idea/inference and 4) specific information (negative). In this unit we learned how to distinguish which questions are type 1 and then we looked at the questions and answers more closely to pick out the key words to aid in finding the answer. We got about halfway, up to the tactic about looking for key words, when our time ran out, which goes back to what I said earlier about doing one unit per class. Next time, we will complete unit 7 and look at their homework, quiz 7, which is found in the back. Also, we will have our first mock test, the listening part only though, because there is not enough time to do all 7 parts in one class. I intend to do the listening part and have them correct it in class; I probably won’t ask them for the answers like usual but rather give them the answer key along with the transcripts. Then we will move on to unit 7 for the remainder of the class and the following week, I will give them the reading part.

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