Technology to Teach Thinking Skills By Desri Fitriana (Journal 5)

Actually as a teacher a little bit hard to teach thinking skill to our students. Because to develop students’ thinking skill we as a teacher should prepare learning activities and technology tools to supports their thinking skill. When we applied learning activities to our students, we should consider about students’ cognitive itself. Better if we as a teacher applied activities which consist of cognitive skill (the students should think) and also movements. So, it likes discussion, jigsaw, micro-teaching and role-play, etc. Those activities can encourage our students to do cognitive skill and also movements. As a student in SSE, I have felt that those activities have a good impact for me to develop my thinking skill, because I not only know about the subject itself but I also have known about how I implement that subject in the real life.

            Actually when our students acquire the lesson we should consider how are they remember it, whether it is short term or long term. Better if we make our lesson to long term memory in their concept. Basically, students more remember about something which meaningful to them rather than visual or auditory. So that is why Bloom made a Bloom’s Taxonomy about students’ steps acquires the lesson.

            In SSE sometimes we called Low Order Thinking Skill (LOTS) and High Order Thinking Skill (HOTS) for represent Bloom’s Taxonomy. LOTS it likes a recall, memorizing, explaining and etc. HOTS more higher than LOTS, because in HOTS we expected to apply our knowledge, combining ideas and develop our knowledge. So that is why in SSE we focused on HOTS approach. Unfortunately, most of senior high school tends to used LOTS for their examination, not HOTS. The types of questions in Senior High School focused on remembering not applying.

Technology to Teach Writing (4th Journal TLL) By Desri Fitriana

Nowadays, the way to teach writing is various. Based on my experienced when I have been studying in SSE is very many ways to teach writing. Especially in the third semester, I think most of subjects emphasized in writing. So, the students should have written reflective paper every week approximate for four subjects. In reflective paper itself, focus on the writer. So, it is consist of writers’ expression, opinion or suggestion.

Raimes (1991) identified four different focuses in second language writing, such as: Focus on form, Focus on the writer, Focus on the content and Focus on the reader. In my opinion, as a generation of teachers it is better if we combined all of those things. Because, when we do writing not only focus on form itself. Sometimes if we talk about writing, some of people think that writing should have good and grammatical sentences and no grammatical error. I do not really agree! But remember, for the first time when we learnt about writing, in my opinion it is better we should be start from recount text. In the recount text our students can be express what their feel into writing. For example, they can be able to write based on their experiences, like holiday, working or unforgettable moments. So, I think it is easier to make our students writing than they should only focus on grammar.

Because like I did, wrote reflective paper itself can be drill our capabilities, like how make a good sentences, how to make grammatical structure itself. Step by step it makes our knowledge about forms are good, especially when our teacher give feedback to us. It is more make me know clearly what our mistakes when we make mistakes. So, let’s try to write your reflective paper guys J.

Technology to Teach Speaking (3rd Journal TLL)

            In my opinion, speaking is one of the most important things as a standard to measure successful acquire second language or not, because with this way we can know fluency, accuracy and pronunciation somebody when they speak in second language. So, that is why into teaching and learning objectives, the students expected to be able speaking fluency especially for daily life. Acquire learning speaking not only we get from text books, but also we can learn using technology, like software, social networks even with native speakers. Based on Swain theory (1985) about comprehension input, he said that we needed comprehensible input to produced comprehensible output, so it was balance. Actually, Swain means that if you speak in your second language (L2) and unconsciously you make some mistakes and your interlocutors revise what you said before, you should receive your interlocutor’s feedback and make it right in order that you understand what you would say.

            Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is the best method for this approach to teaching speaking skill students. Why? Because that method encourage the students to be more active and involved into all of class activities especially for communicate each other’s. CLT can provide discussion group, role play, asking question or conversation in daily life. So, all of things can be united into CLT.

Based on my experienced what I have in SSE, I have learn speaking skill with the good way, like watched movie, heard a music, role play or microteaching. All of those things used a technology to make it easier. For example, you always use computer or laptop to make your assignment in Microsoft office or make a movie in Movie maker project or communicate in Skype. So, that is why I told you before technology are our requirement nowadays, sometimes we tend to rely on technology to all of business. But the most important thing is being positive, because with technology we can learn more deeply about something included speaking skills. 

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