What to Teach in EFL Class

It perhaps has come to our mind on the idea that we don’t know about how to teach English to our students. Some might say that the way I teach is confusing my students. Other might say that teaching English for complete beginners is practically impossible. These are problems the we, teachers, face today because we could not differentiate between language and skills.

In teaching English, there are two main domains that teachers need to understand and comprehend, system/language and skills. These two should not be mixed since both are not the same things and one has very little to do to the other. 

Language/system (language will be used) deals with the pattern of the language. On this domain, there are 4 items that need to be taught in the class; vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and function. Vocabulary deals with the meaning of a word; pronunciation deals with how the word is pronounced; grammar deals with the structure of words; function deals with meaning of the structure of words, grammar (we will discuss this in depth letter on).

Skill, on the other hand, is the ability to use the patterns of the language, in other words, the ability to listen, read, speak and write. Our understanding of language/system is applied or used when we listen, read, speak or write. Thus, it is acceptable to state that language and skill are two different things which should be taught separately. 

Additionally, reading and listening skills are called receptive skill, and likewise, speaking and writing are called productive skill. Thus, teaching the English language – and any other languages – should be focused on teaching one receptive skill and simultaneously teaching one productive skill. In other words, when students receive an input, they need to produce an output, for example, teaching reading and consecutively teaching speaking. 

In teaching English, some researchers suggest to use 1/3 of classroom activities to teach language and 2/3 to teach skills, one receptive and one productive. This is not to suggest that language is less important, but teaching skills requires more time and more tasks, so students understand and able to use the language. It is believed that teaching language could be indirectly while teaching skills (more reading on this claim is suggested). 

One of the misconception that we, teachers, believe is correct is that we tend to integrate teaching skills and language – which as we discussed are two separate things – into one activity in the classroom. How come students who have limited range of vocabulary able to read an article. This is none sense. We need to teach them language first (e.g. vocabulary) before we teach them reading. Thus, teachers should aware of this dilemma that teaching language should come first prior to teaching skills.

Teachers, sometimes, tend to fix students’ error of how to pronounce a certain word while he/she speaks. This act resulting not only the problem of mixing language and skill but also the problem of distracting students while they speak expressing ideas. 

To conclude, teaching the English language by blending language/system and skills either receptive or productive will only mislead students and worst of all, the instructional aim could not be more unaccomplished.

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Sleep Before 12 Midnight

When we were kids, 2 decades ago or so, we were told to get to bet before 9 and it was so easy to have long, nice sleep. However, today at adulthood, sleeping before twelve o’clock is not something we accustom to. It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that we can’t. We name this insomnia. 

We believe what doctors say, maybe on a health website, that insomnia is not a pleasant habit and it comes with dangerous results to our body and it should not be lingered. Insomnia results, as doctors exclaim, an unproductive day ahead. 

Since insomnia happens when our eyes stay wide awake all night and somehow we don’t have power to close them off, there are tips and advises offered for most adults. These tips help us to override how our mind works so we might get some long, nice sleep. 

First, this must be considered as challenge, otherwise, it won’t work. Second, the following tips are not in order so you may choose whichever you believe suited you best.

Exercise is good and always will be and is believed that it can prevent insomnia. Exercise in the morning burns fat and is good for heart and brain. Since you are insomniac which means waking up in the morning always in rush for work, you can start exercising in the evening. 

It should not necessarily be a strong exercise because strong or tough exercises are not equivalent to healthy body. Jogging a few rounds or sit up a hundred times or perhaps swimming can be considered a healthy and easy exercises everyone can do.

No coffee after 6 if you are a coffee fan and if you aren’t don’t try to have some before 6 PM. As doctors say that caffeine in coffee blocks neurons responsible for brain to sleep. Thus, this is one of reasons why we can’t sleep. 

Other methods are probably suited you more but these two are among the best and the easiest. Let’s start challenging ourselves by starting the two tips a few times and then we develop other appropriate methods that work universally. 

No one can deny that insomnia, the difficulty to fall asleep, is problematic and it seems like it’s killing us. Therefore, it is tremendously important to challenge ourselves to sleep before 12 o’clock. This challenge is best be done weekly or once a month.

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Keep Phones Away on Weekends

In modern times, keeping our phones aside from us is probably, with or without a strict command, a tremendous challenge we might face. It is very difficult for most adults unable to check Facebook feeds or tweets, or perhaps, unable to read news from online portal websites, or maybe, unable to check on games’ current activity.

It would mean lost in the world when we forget to take our phones due to rush and urgency meetings or unintentionally forget to recharge the phones the other night. The idea of being offline to all social media and instant messaging is, if not exaggerated, a catastrophe. No one could bare not sliding left only to check what time is it. 

The notion of keeping our phones away and staying offline for a weekend, probably just on Sunday, is in fact a good and healthy challenge we need to commit. Although it is conventionally unorthodox for our postmodern time to evade phones, not carrying phones in our pockets for a day has calm and friendly advantages we might get. Below are pivotal points that one, everyone, might get on committing to phone away on Sunday challenge, only for 24 hours.

It has been awhile since we were properly bored and weary. It is good to get bored because good things happen when we have to search for something interesting to do. Good and handmade furniture might come to existence from abandon logs in our back yard. It doesn’t require skillful hands to craft logs to be placed in a living room. 

Client mails can wait as well as research papers because there are people who care more about you, perhaps your nanny who wants to comb your hair, and there are others who need you, to play with or to talk to. 

Because some extraordinary experiences can’t be obtained on screen and there are thoughts waiting to be written down. There are places just outside the town that are widely unexplored and you need sometimes to see those places to have new perspective. 

This challenge guides us to understand that phones are too addictive and most importantly, they are trying to keep you on your phone to make many out of you. Thousands of ads prompt inconveniently and uncontrollably over and over. 

Because traffic crowd on the street doesn’t feel the same as traffic on online servers. Horns on The street should not be forgotten because their presence is indeed the alternative form of music instrument. 

Challenges aren’t supposed to be treated bad. They are need to be embraced as they develop us to be precisely more mature and straighten ourselves in many observable ways. Thus, if you happen to read this on Sunday, turn of the phone.

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The Horror of Nothing

Couples who have either been together for a quite long period of time or only a few weeks must have heard or said the horrifying nothing to each other on the course of their relationship. This happens, in general cases, when reality doesn’t fit with expectation.

When the partner says nothing happens, it actually means, something really indeed happens. But she or he wouldn’t say a word that something has happened because the expectation is: if you truly and sincerely love me, you must understand me and if I have to use words to describe the nothing, thus, it proves that you are not entirely capable to love me.

This is bald, selfish and immature attitude and adults aren’t supposed to behave as childish as this. Kids, as we all acknowledge, don’t need to use words to express their feelings and intentions because parents know precisely what they want and need.

Remember when we, adults, were kids few decades ago, our parents gave either presents, toy or baby doll, or attention, love, caring etc., without being asked. In other words, we, as kids, got what we wanted without us needed to use words. 

Our parents weren’t necessarily able to read our minds, though we never thought this way when we were a kid. They know what we want and need simply because they wanted to give what they never had yet deeply urged it. or, they gave us presents or caring purely because other kids were having that.

Yet, as adults, we prone to bring our childhood experience of love and attention to our adulthood life. This is disastrous. How can we expect inexperience partner to fully understand us the way our parents did? Unlike our parents, partners are incapable to understand nothing as they lack of experience.

Having to have experienced partners comes with problematic situation, too. Sometimes, it takes years and experiments to be understanding and at the same time loving. Thus, it might be, for some of us, terrible to have to old partner. Likewise, experienced partners had to have multiple partners before they commit to stay with us and jealousy most likely occurs oftentimes as they compare or teat us as their previous.

To be understood is to be understanding that one cannot understand one another without proper communication. First step is to eradicate the idea of love as perfectly complete understanding – as mind reading expectation – to using words and say what bother us so deeply.

Once we accept this thought and develop a mutual understanding that nothing is an ignorance action and words should be used instead, our love life, hopefully, can be as depicted in movies – though love stories are all (most of them) wrong.

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On Fantasies

Fantasy can simply be defined as the act of creating our own world that happens in our mind – only in our minds. The fractions of pictures that we can imagine in our head could be surviving a zombie apocalypse world or perhaps dating the crashes in a romantic dinner or maybe being a CEO at fancy corporation which manufacture electronic devises. Hence, there are several benefits we can attain from fantasies. In this essay, we’re going to look at values fantasies provide us. We are also going to examine what are examples of good and bad fantasies and how should we reacts upon them.

Everyone fantasizes once in a while and we should not be embarrassed of fantasies that occur in our minds. Experts believe that voices or pictures that play in our heads are not because we are insane or odd or having an injured brain. This happens purely because that is how our brain works. Everyone, our parents, friends of our lovers, fantasizes and there is nothing wrong with it.

Fantasies are the cheapest form of entertainment that we can enjoy in our quiet moments. Unlike any other type of entertainments, fantasies do not cost us even a penny. They do not require place or time, they only need us and our beautiful mind. Furthermore, we can be any one and can we do anything. We can visit wonderful places with partners and kids or give speech at international conferences where current issues are discussed, and they all are free and very much relaxing. 

It relaxes us in a way we might never possess. Some may perhaps doubt this idea do to the widespread facts that fantasies are pretty much a waste of time, sinful acts or crazy thoughts. Some fantasies are crazy and vulgar and that are ok and some are benevolent and that are ok, too. Who are we to judge with what happens in peoples’ minds. Thus, these multipurpose and multi layered thoughts indeed relax us. 

It’s ok to fantasize weather living in beautiful and extravagant hotels in Abu Dhabi or being a model for female magazines or perhaps experimenting newly discovered intercourse positions, cursing at our rivals maybe put them down on bare hands with one single punch. It’s not a sinful act because the sane fantasize in their minds while the crazy transform thought to actions, literally. 

No one blames us of what happens in our heads. They simply can’t know unless we utter it with words of what are we fantasizing. We sometimes need to fantasize and imagine the other possible reality that we can conjure in our mind which has not effect in this reality. Yet, we, the rational and healthy mind, do not act upon every voices that are speaking in our head. We should be wise and no harm follows.

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On Love - The horror of love stories

In modern time where we live today, the term romantic love is so widely spread. We can find it in bestselling novels authored by many brilliant writers or Hollywood blockbusters directed by creative people. Yet the sad truth – and it’s hard to admit – is that most of the love stories depicted in movies or novels are so wrong and somehow they aren’t healthy to be instigated in our lives today. Here in this journal, there are several points that need to be dumbed down for all of us – especially men – in hoping that we can understand the meaning of love and understand how to love well. Furthermore, we are going to point out the error of romanticism and why we should stay away from this view.

In old days, people married by reasons, probably because their lands were closed to one another, or perhaps they bred the same cattle, or maybe they were in the same religion, and many other rational reason why people decided to live together. Even in Islamic tradition, men should marry women based on four reasons or criteria that were described by the prophet; her beauty, her wealth, her descendant, and her religion.

But now, people would say “you can’t be married by reason, it’s none sense”. “You should follow what your heart says because that’s is the true love”. These are examples of romantic sayings that are mostly given in books or films. This idea that we should live our love lives derived by intuition is very awful picture of love – or even worse – it’s a catastrophe. Nothing, throughout our life, is done by intuition. No pilots try to land the plane by intuition, or a surgeon operating a surgery by intuition. Everything need to be learned – everything, especially love.

When we look further on how love is depicted in stories is that the stories end immediately after two people meet and say that they love one another or they don’t and must separate to different path because they feel that they don’t belong to each other. The example of this can be seen on the Before We Go film or Cinderella and many others. The stories in these films are so wrong because love is not about finding someone – the one – but rather keeping that one person. Furthermore, these stories do not mention about conflicts, rejection, sulking, jealousy or other phenomenon that might occur when we decided to commit to live together. Because – for the romantic – love means having all in common of two people.

The notion of love according to romantic is that when two individuals meet, they must meet all things in common. For example, if I like certain thing, you must, by coincidence, like that too and if I don’t like certain thing, you’ll feel the same. The idea of having all things in common is relevant to one’s personal characteristic. Two souls must share some similar feeling or point of view to particular object. This is baffling. We cannot entirely similarize our characteristic or preference to one self but we tolerate the differences.

Another point that love stories portrayed in movies or novels are so wrong is that the idea that if you love me, you must understand me. In other words, I need to be understood without me needing to say a word. This is none sense. How can we expect other people to know what’s inside our complicated head when we sulk? It takes ages probably decades for us to understand a tiny friction of other self. Yet, the partners in movies can amazingly know what happened to their partners, and can behave so good to cool down the situation.

In real life, couple don’t talk when they have something in mind – a trouble at work or kids or perhaps the partners themselves – and they expect the partner to fully understand them, In other words, to read my mind. We can see, for example, when the partners don’t notice the new perfume or the different hair cut by slamming the door. When we try to ask “what’s the matter?” and they simply say “nothing”.

The real deal is not finding the meaning of true love. There many definitions of love that have been described by philosophers. We know the platonic love which is explained by great philosopher – Plato – or the romantic love and many others. Thus, the real deal is to examine love that agreed to ourselves.

Finally, we can sum up that love story, in its essence, is a disaster. It ruins our love lives and is an inaccurate version of love. Loving by intuition is revolting, but it should be learned and practiced – just like any other skills. Demanding other people to understand us by a telepathic ability is horrible, people can’t read what inside our mind. Above all, the story of our love does not end when we and our partners say the magic words but it continues. So, the friendly advice for fellow humans; don’t watch or read love stories too much, they tell us rather misleading form of love.

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The Challenge We Must Accept

Challenges are what make us strong. As the old proverb – smooth ocean doesn’t make good sailors – Sometimes we see ourselves as a person who can do things that only our self can solve it perfectly. Another time, we feel internally proud of ourselves when our friends turn to us for their personal problems because they know we are capable to help them. Today, we dare to challenge you – and ourselves – for the task that most of us afraid or incapable to do, that is, to call or reengage to our old best friends that once were always there with us. They might be the person we met last decade in a bus or our high school teacher that were once helping us with our problems, or think older, our elementary classmate, the one we wouldn’t go to school if he or she were sick. This is the challenge that we all must except.

Why this is – we believe – so important?

Look at how it will affect us when we try to reengage with them. It will show us a caring and emotionally intelligent person wanted to make ourselves happy. On the other hand, look how it will affect them. This effort will make our relationship much stronger.

How to do it?

First, start with texting. This is the easiest way to begin with because texting lets us know them back bit by bit without meeting them directly. We might often see them on BBM feed or on Facebook timeline that is why to start texting them through social media assuming that they still on the same mobile number or the same account.

Second, start during a big event that they probably experience it the same way as we do. This will prevent the awkwardness between you two, after all, this is the first time you text them again after ages of no communication. If the event is a disaster that you believe happens somewhere nearby. Ask how they are, are they alright, is there something happen to them. Then you can talk about you two, talk about when the last time you two met. After that, you improvise, use the communication skill you have to keep the conversation nicely flow. When we know their whereabouts, we can ask to meet them directly. 

Of course it is easier said than done. But this matter must be done. We cannot forget them just because we moved town or changed school that makes us far away from them. They are the same valuable as they used to be when they were close to us. We need to start now, start one by one, and choose the best way and in the right time.

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