Techniques for Teaching Speaking, Pronunciation and Listening

Participant Evaluation

All-day workshop presented by Marsha Chan at Gavilan College August 21, 2010 for Gavilan and Hartnell ESL Faculty Development

15 participants. Scale 1=poor, 5=excellent. Average scores:

• 4.93 Importance of the concepts presented
• 4.73 Value of presentation in meeting your needs
• 4.73 Organization and presentation of presenter
• 4.73 Your learning experience
• 4.20 Usefulness of handouts
• 4.60 Active involvement of participants
• 4.60 Effective use of technology
• 4.83 Overall quality of session

List 2 to 3 most salient things you learned today

• AWESOME TEACHER! Importance of focusing on interaction; importance of breaking speech into thought groups; new strategies to teach pronunciation; new ideas! This was great.
• Using physical activities to reinforce teaching pronunciation, specifically standing up for stressed syllables and using 2 arms/hands to mimic tongue/front teeth action; great games adapted for minimal pairs
• A variety of activities and ways of exemplary class interaction
• Voxopop uses and how to set it up; game suggestions; using T or F quiz to motivate conversation about pronunciation topics
• I liked seeing Marsha’s games of learning how to use Voxopop. I think that they will make my L/S classes more fun
• Voxopop- first experience; good review of phonological, prosodic points; Thanks- very informative and enjoyable
• What to teach/what to skip over in pronunciation; relative importance of vocab, grammar, Voxopop
• Up and down physical stress, stress, stress, STRESS!
• Using grouping techniques; I need to work on (my) pronunciation; every CC in our area is facing the same type of problems; create awareness
• Ways to use games; ways to use Voxopop; other resources to improve my teaching of pronunciation
• Choral practice and necessity to repeat many, many times
• How to use Voxopop
• The importance of teaching stress and how it is manifested in speech; how to use games in teaching phonetics

Additional comments and suggestions

• Great! Informative! Fun!
• Love her excitement about the subject matter
• Only downside: too much explanation on Voxopop. I could not follow it (this was before we heard the recordings). Also, it would have been more helpful to practice exactly how to make the recordings, rather than just hear them. (It became too lecture oriented rather than participatory learning)
• I wish Gavilan IT had downloaded the software you sent, but the other glitches were just normal procedure when using technology… Thank you!
• Needed more individual help and time to set up Voxopop. A pre-check to see if the computers have all the necessary updates would have been really helpful
• A lot of insights into the needs of ESL students and activities to meet these needs- fabulous!
• More handouts to take home
• Thank you for sharing your creative ideas and materials with us
• A very valuable experience
• Can we invite Marsha back again?