Conversation club is an opportunistic forum that gives the participants an opportunity to exchange spoken thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
Conversation involves spontaneous and interactive communication between the participants that involves more than one member. The conversation involves polite sharing of subjected thoughts on the distinguished topic through talking to one another. The conversation clubs play the important roles of sharpening the communicational skills to the participants, especially when learning a foreign language. This is because the member gets the skills of pronouncing, spelling, and the fundamental meaning of the given language words (Conklin 1912). Therefore, the conversation club creates a discussion forum for the members to understand the problematic topic, resulting to a quality and understandable solution.
Reflection OneThis section of the paper aims at reflecting and evaluating the specific conversational club for the class that took place on November 27, 2013. The club involved my two students, Dunia from Saudi Arabia and Am from Thailand. My names are Yasmeen Madkaly, their teacher and the leader of the particular conversation club.The completed conversational session was favorable to all the participants, although there are areas that are needed to sharpen students’ skills in their learning efforts.
The students’ feedback and the way I presided the conversation reflects the maximum efforts that could be done for the students to achieve their learning objectives. This includes the way students gave their feedback, as well as the way I framed the questioning period to lay the ground of good discussion (Brooks 2012).As can be analyzed, the overall success of the conversation resulted due to good planning and having a sound organization of the discussion phrases.
The discussion points were well customized according to the students’ capabilities for providing feedback that aims at helping the improvement of personal communication skills.Stronger PointsI learnt that the lessons planned were clear to the participants since every question asked was understandable to the students.The students provided the concrete feedback on the discussion questionsI ensured the phrases the vocabularies used in the conversations were well known to the students by selecting only the ones that had been used in the class or the one they use in their daily hustle. This is to avoid any hick up that may be caused by using the irrelevant words. For example, asking the student on what one feels when one bottle up the feelings.
The set up of the conversation model used enhanced the monitoring and feedback provision in the talking points.This is because it provided the fundamental framework of asking the question to each student at a time. Therefore, every person in the conversation contributed her opinions on the particular topics that made every participant to understand the question to the best.There was good monitoring of feedback, especially on the decisions each student takes through the comparisons of every members perceptions.Weaker PointsFew participants in the conversational club made the debate a bit poorer since the competitiveness of ideas was low. This is because the more the participants, the higher the quality of feedback since everybody shares the ideas or opinionsThere was slighter mismanagement of time since there at a times the students could be heard disturbing the other, when trying to express her points.In conclusion, the conversation club was clear and straight to the points where the learners understood all the topical questions. The conversation was helpful since it reflected most of the phrases and other topics taught in class.
It also helped me to understand the skill level of the students in order to measure the progress of the teaching experience. In future conversation, I will consider having more students in the club in order to judge themselves by giving each a chance to express the feelings on the feedback provided.Reflection TwoThis analysis and reflection is based on the conversation club that was conducted on December 12, 2013. The participants consisted my two students, Maha from Kuwait and Am from Thailand, both of whom were studying the Masters Degree.
My names are Yasmeen Madkaly, the teacher and host in the conversation club, where I presided all the matters discussed in the forum. In the debate, the main topic of discussion was the phrases of shopping that included treating oneself, retail therapy, and on a shoestring.The full conversation yielded positive results, as I used strategic methodologies to share ideas from the participants. In planning for the conversation, I ensured the students understand the target phrases by using the day-to-day events of technological efforts in the global market. However, the mode of discussion was set to be questioning forum where the students needed to provide feedback by selecting either yes or no answer. The questions were set up such that it provided the direct answer when the student selects either yes or no answer. The feedback provided helps the participants to monitor the decision stages of the members in order to articulate their understandings of the shopping phrases.
Stronger PointsThere was better planning of the conversation session where I had prepared the questions that are being discussed. This includes identifying the questions that complements the phrases discussed in class.There was an understandable setting of time limits, which helped the conversation session to be objective and time saving. This is because the only important answer was either yes or no and other elaborations were just for emphasizing purposes. The setting of time limits was achieved by ensuring the students answer each question, one after the other.
The conversation session was much personalized where the questions discussed were aimed to evaluate the individual experiences, thereby creating a room for everyone to participate in giving opinions. For example, asking the students if they compare the prices of goods when purchasing online products in various e-commerce platforms such as ebay.Simple instructions of answering the questions from the provided manuals help both the students and teachers to give their opinions or compile the feedback given by each participant.Weaker PointsThe students were not given the chance to measure their knowledge capacities since all the information and examples were provided in the discussion papers.
Therefore, their level of experience could be rarely measured. For example, some of the people could have used other platforms such as Amazon, but the topic directly points out the ebay as a single example of e-commerce site. Therefore, the teacher could leave the students to suggest their experienced example for better conceptualization of the topic of discussion.In conclusion, the conversation club ensured that the participants provided the direct feedback that they need only confirm their perceptions.
The conversation helped the students to demonstrate their capabilities to understand the current scope of the global market happenings and the adoption of technological advancements. It also helped me to identify the level of understanding that the students learnt on the practical commercial world in order to establish the efforts needed to improve their experiences.
References
- Conklin, MG (1912) Conversation: What to Say and How to Say It, New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 35-60
- Brooks, D (2012) The Conversation, University of Queensland Press