Sophia Quattrocchi

Dr. Cho

C&T 491

12 June 2019

Journal Reflection 2

This week we observed the lesson on “Running Dictation”. This week the students

worked on dictating, writing, and solving riddles in English by competing in a team race. The

instructions for the game were quite complicated, so it was impressive to see Greg describe the

rules for the students so they could easily understand. Greg first explained running dictation and

also explained what riddles are. Then he explained the directions in short simple sentences and

also demonstrated the movements himself. I’ve learned a lot from how Greg explains and talks to

the students. He is always very clear, speaks loudly, and enunciates his words very clearly. He

also always provides hand gestures or visual demonstrations in order to assist his explanation.

Riddles are already challenging for students, so it was even more challenging for the

Kyunghwa students to solve in their second language. Many of the students struggled to solve

the difficult riddles and needed several hints. After hints the students almost always were able to

solve the riddle. Overall the activity was very successful, however, the students did have trouble

with one of the riddles due to cultural differences. While English speakers call the sides of a coin

“heads and tails”, Korean speakers call it “front and back”, so the students had trouble solving

the riddle regarding a coin. While Greg accounted for cultural differences all his riddles, this

small difference in vocabulary confused the students. Greg easily caught on to the confusion and

eventually accepted other answers as well, and he will probably end up changing this riddle in

his next lesson. This small mistake showed me how diligent you have to be when choosing
material and vocabulary for students in order to make sure it also makes sense with the native

culture and language.

By shadowing and watching Greg it made me realize how much work goes into each

individual lesson. All of the KU students were a bit nervous to teach the “running dictation”

lesson because of how extensive and complicated the directions were. With complicated

directions it was hard to explain in a simple way for the students to easily understand. Also,

when we were giving hints to the students, it took awhile to determine what hints to give the

students. The hints depended on a variety of factors and it was difficult to give hints that weren’t

too easy and also wouldn’t steer them in the wrong path. It was fun to see the students’

excitement and competitiveness in class. It was also rewarding to help them and watch them

work through the riddles as a team. I’m a bit nervous to teach the “running dictation” lesson

tomorrow since there are many rules to the activity. But I’m also looking forward to it because it

will be good teaching practice.