Module 8: Office applications for whole-class teaching

The recent trend of pair-work and group-work activities has been so powerful that we sometimes seem to forget how valuable whole-class teaching is..... This module has made me aware of the different functions of each of the interaction patterns.

Whole-class teaching is very valuable as students are exposed to exactly the same input and feedback, contributes to collaborative class spirit, weak students learn from strong ones, and despite the recent trend of student-centered approaches, sometimes teacher-centered classes are necessary.

I really liked and I am going to use the 'weed read' activity in my thesis writing class as my students definitely make the mistake of using redundant words in their texts. For this, I am planning to use 'Word' and focus on the importance of lexico-grammar, as the extra words are mostly related to prepositions accompanying verbs. Again I am planning to use Word to focus on synonymy, which is very important for cohesion. I will use a text where the same word is repeated over and over again. Then I will get the whole class to discuss what the problem is and how the text can be improved. If the students don't come up with good synonyms, I will show them how to use the 'thesaurus' option in Word, attracting their attention to the fact that although two words may be synonyms in one context, they may not be so in another.

For coherence and unity, I will try PowerPoint. I will put one complete sentence on each slide, go on to the next slide and the next sentence and ask the students whether the next sentence follows the previous one logically and smoothly. I think PowerPoint will be good for this to construct the text bit by bit, sentence by sentence, and to get rid of the 'weeds', in this case sentences that do not unite with the whole text.

As I have not been teaching lower levels for a long time now, all I can come up with at the moment is 'writing', and the elements of good writing.