Discussions

Your Name and Title:Mr. Dinesh  Kumar Thapa, Lecturer

School or Organization Name:Kitini College, Lalitpur Nepal

Co-Presenter Name(s): None

Area of the World from Which You Will Present: Nepal

Language in Which You Will Present:English

Target Audience(s): Practising Teachers in primary and middle schools

Short Session Description (one line):

The session entitled ‘Insights from Inside: Redefining ELT’ has three objectives to get across to the participants, i.e. to sensitize them with the value of effective communication in ELT, to help reflect for defining ELT in their own experiential terms and to discuss into the constituents of  effectiveness while teaching under limited resources. The presenter has expected working teachers at all levels as the expected participants.

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):

The session is designed  to link the insights from this presentation into the participants' professional experience in order come up their own definition of teaching. Three major activities will be employed for 5 minutes with an expectation to assist the participants to reach an inductive conclusion about teaching in their own experiential perspectives.

The first activity, i.e. Instructional Communication is designed such that one participant had to mock- teach others for drawing a figure. Then, the individual participants’ drawings will be compared among each other and against the instructor’s paper. Upon discussion, it will be apparent that the instructor’s paper (meant as the intention of the teacher) does not match with other participants’ performances (meant as the students’ learning). Then, the conclusion will be reached that the apparent gap between the teacher’s plan and the learners’ achievement is a serious issue in teaching. Short discussion will also held that only interactive and dialogic techniques can help minimize the gap. Similarly, the second activity, i.e. Working Best in the Worst Situation, will be purported to sensitize the teachers who have to teach in under several constraints of teaching materials for creative utilization of available teaching materials. Here, participants will be asked to choose only three items from a list of a dozen (all items could be used as ELT materials, such as, Textbook, Pictures, etc.), and design an activity plan to teach a lesson in a class. Then, sample responses will be invited and creative choices will be shared. This activity intently elicits the supposed responses that it is the teacher who can make the difference even in under- resourced classroom settings. Finally, the third activity, i.e. Teaching Traits Scale, is meant to elicit from the participants what teaching methodology- technology they will rate as the best one among ten different techniques. Participants will be asked to furnish arguments why they choose one over the nine others. This activity is reflective in nature, and a research meta- analysis report will be cited to conclude that.

Websites / URLs Associated with Your Session: None