Lerning Outside Classroom: Advantage and Disadvantage of Vocational Education

Advantage and Disadvantage of Vocational Education

When we graduated from Mathayom 3or grade 9, there are 2 options for us to further our education, namely general education and vocational education. Vocational education seems weaker than general one.  Although vocational education has negative image, this dost not mean that Thai Vocational Education is not good.

          The main advantage of vocational education is easy to find jobs. All vocational students are prepared to be ready for their careers with various courses and internship. Hence, almost employers usually accept vocational students to work in their companies because they realize that the students have enough experience for working. In case, if we have an opportunity to do our internship at a good company, we will get paid. Fortunately, if we do good job and our boss recognizes our diligence, we might be able to work there immediately. Furthermore, the vocational education is very interesting to learn. There are various and interesting courses to learn.  A poll conducted by the Office of the Higher Education Commission (OHEC) revealed that 2 most popular vocational courses are industrial subjects with 37% of students followed by commerce or business administration courses with 24% of students. The results from Suan Dusit poll showed that the most popular course is automotive technician followed by accounting, business administration and electrical technology. Apart from this, when we have completed vocational certificate, we will have 2 options for our future studying. We can study in higher vocational certificate. Meanwhile, we can choose to study in some universities. Suan Dusit poll showed that 63.24% of vocational students have permanent after they graduate. In addition, vocational study is not stressed. It is good for those who are not good at science and mathematics.  Also, the students can go out of their institution after they finished their classes. Besides, their uniform is unique and pretty.

          One of the major disadvantages of vocational education is that bad image. We often hear negative news on TV or newspaper about students from 2 different institutions fight on the bus, for example, mechanical students from Pathumwan Institute of Technology were shoot by opponents, Rajamangala university University Tawan-Ok, Uthenthawai Campus. Moreover, Mr.Chaturon, the current Minister of Education, said that a survey showed that in 2004, the number of fight of vocational students raised 3,000 times per years. Secondly, opportunities to study in universities of vocational students are restricted. In many vocational education institutions, there are not any advisors to give useful information about university admission. This can cause the students confused about the university admission system. Moreover, some faculties in several universities do not accept vocational students because the knowledge of Physic, Chemistry and Biology is required. Finally, Thai children and their parents still have wrong attitudes about vocational education. Almost of them view it ineffective and without dignity unlike receiving university degrees. In the past, students graduated from vocational institutions were unemployed. For ones who were employed, they were blue-collar.

          All things considered, no matter how advantageous or disadvantageous vocational education is, if we are good students, we can succeed in our study. Meanwhile, if we are lazy no matter where we study, we cannot succeed easily. Thus, we should study in programs that suit our interests and abilities.

General Education: is the best choice for Thai students

 General Education: is the best choice for Thai students

Normally, secondary students who had completed certificate need to decide about their further studying. Therefore, almost of them usually confuse to choose appropriate major education for them. They also would be facing problem don’t know any information about it. How they can solve this problem?  Can you see how troubles are they? On my view, a general education or learning in high school is the best choice for Thai students. So the governments should be motivate and encourage Thai students to continue studying in a general education. They may be promote or give more information about the general education, especially, information in senior high school level. 

          One point in favor of studying in general education is a lot of high schools in Thailand could support Thai students' study courses. There are more over 1,000 good qualities Thai senior high schools for Thai students’ choices, which it is rather than vocational institutions. For example in Nakhon Si Thammarat, there are 71 high schools while vocational institutions just 11. In addition, senior high school students have opportunity graduating at undergraduate level is faster than vocational students by just learn with "Pre-degree course." Likewise Ramkhamhaeng University allows students in grade 10-12 can enroll in some faculties of it. Thirdly, according to Office of the Basic Education Commission, 60% of Thai students choose to study in a General Education (GE). As was previously stated, it’s a good choice for Thai students. As the result, many students interested to study in a general education.

          What is more, high school students can get chance to be exchange students. They will get various experiences of living on abroad; cultures and languages form own country. Furthermore, it's the opportunity to enhance your credit. It was taken to written in their portfolio for apply to study or apply for a scholarship. Moreover, good jobs that they don't have to risk and also have a high salary, for example, doctor and engineer, only for the academic study.  Because of these faculties need a high score in math and science admission. For instance, the most high salary rate is doctor which starting salary for new graduates is 51,285 baht. In the same way, the minimum is 15,000 baht for a graduate degree, meanwhile students who graduated from vocational get start at 6,500-10,000 baht (National Statistical Office). By the way, on the whole almost of them are usually appear good images more than vocational students. Similarly, Empirical research shows that vocational students with smoking rates, having to carry weapons and bickering with fighting are higher than high school students, (Prof.Dr. Savitri, 2011) All things considered, a General Education (GE) is the best choice for Thai students.

       On the other hand, almost of general education students don’t get direct learning experience from apprenticeship like vocational students. Nevertheless, they were allowed to internship at local hospital of each district. This is for students who want to work in hospitals. Besides, they can get several of careers experiences by getting part-time job or learning in courses for careers, which are additional courses in all Thai high schools. And in the event of they did not have perfect experience in pragmatic as another education; it was a cause of some private companies request to recruit people who have experienced rather than high school students who aren't tight with pragmatic performance. Although the problem, quite serious effect for general education students or high school students, government supports people who holds a Bachelor with the minimum salary is 15,000 baht. A part from that, there are high emulation to admit in high schools because 60% of Thai students interested in a general education. However, there are moreover 1,000 high schools in Thailand to support them.

     In conclusion, even of studying in a general education has much hindrance, as the result people who are studied be resourceful. Moreover, they will get both of stable works and rich wealth when they are graduated. According to policy of the government supports people who hold a Bachelor with the minimum salary is 15,000 baht. Furthermore, general education students can get experiences about living of study on abroad and career pragmatic as not less as vocational students. These points was well put by Earl J. McGrath, cited in Miller 1988 when he said, “General education is the thread that ought to weave a pattern of meaning into the total learning experience” and support the idea by Arthur Levine, cited in Miller 1988, was said “General education is the breadth component of the undergraduate curriculum”

Lerning Outside Classroom: Organ Donation

Organ Donation

          There are still wrong benefits about organ donation among Buddhists. They believe that if they have donated their organs to others, in future life, they will come handicapped. For example, if they have donated their eyes in the future life they will become the blind. This makes many people hesitate to donate their organs. In fact, for Buddhism, organ donation is a great merit.

          When we die, our organs will be useful for many patients who have trouble in losing their organs. The organ donation is like giving good benefits to others. In the same way, if we wish others to free from suffering organ donation is a good way a Buddhist can do to help them. In Buddhism, donation is one of many basic principles for Buddhists. For instance, in the past life of Buddha, he was a Bodhisattva who donated his eyes to someone who lose his eyes. As a result, he became the Buddha and had second sight eyes. It was the result from his donation. Besides, organ donation also helps patients are reborn with complete organs. Various organs of ours can help many patients free from disorders. If we donate our organs, our lives will be filled with good luck.

          In conclusion, it is not true to think that donating our organs will bring about bad luck in the future life. Organ donation is a good way to help someone who loses their organs. Many Buddhists have good luck in their lives after they have made merit by donating. So organ donation is worth doing. Let’s donate out organs.

Learning inside the classroom (on August 18, 2014)

Learning inside the classroom (August 18, 2014)

Cultivated mind, the individual is responsible for learners and their societies are created a moral matter. Caused by the "public mind" is one thing that is important to instill in people sacrifice. For this reason, the instructor realizes this concept is very important for students in 21th century.

He assigned tasks to learners to design their own syllabus, which focus on public mind concept. According to, learners have been assigned task, they designed 16 lesson plans in own syllabus of each person. And today is the instruction testing day by using lesson plan from own syllabuses in which focus on public mind. After the first one has finished. We face the problem from her presentation; that is the processes in teaching are not success. Hence, the instructor has to explain about how to write correctly lesson plan. First step, learners who will be preservice Teacher Students should understand English curriculum and check standards and indicators before they have built objectives in their lesson plan. Moreover, he also explains about principles of build objectives in our lesson plans. It consist of 3 types; performance, condition and standard. Besides he emphasizes the objectives need to correspond to standards and indicators in English curriculum. And ones of important in this concept, learners shouldn’t task based circle (pre-task, while task or task circle and language function) to apply in their teaching.

According to my instructor said that “Lesson plan is the key of teaching, if you create good lesson plan it’s bring you success in your teaching of that topic.” So preservice Teacher Students should be understand on setting goal in teaching, what skill that you want to focus on. Next step write objectives consistent to the indicators of English curriculum. These steps are important principle to design lesson plan.

Learning Log (Reflect)

Learning Log (Reflect)

The ability to use a language in a communicative way, however, is not just a single unified skill. Most recent thinking has divided language ability into four separate skill areas; listening, reading, speaking, and writing. Hence, teachers need to apply at least two skills in their classes. Moreover, they need to pick modern materials and various methods out for their learners. Including assessing and testing.

According to language teaching basic 4 skills, the first important skill is listening skill. Listening is a neurological cognitive regarding the processing of auditory stimuli received by the auditory system, which it the beginning of others skill. Pay attends on listening teaching. It divides in two styles; listening diphthong and listening comprehension. In addition, there are 5 steps of teaching listening skill; the step begin with teachers teach sound words and emphasize sentence to students. The second step understands individual words. Third, identifying and understanding sentences. Next step, listening to unfamiliar material and the last step is colloquialism or vernacular. All of consider, whether listening skill or speaking skill are important skills for communicative learning and teaching.

Speaking skill is an important skill in language teaching not less than other skills so teacher has to know the principles for teaching speaking. First of the principles is be aware of the differences between second language and foreign language learning contexts. Its mean, speaking is learned in two broad contexts: foreign language and second language situations. The challenges you face as a teacher are determined partly by the target language context. Thus you should have to try to use it with people who speak English or native speakers. Second is teacher should give learners practice with both fluency and accuracy. Third is teacher provides opportunities for learners to talk by using group work or pair work, and limiting teacher talk. Fourth is teacher plans speaking tasks that involve negotiation for meaning. And the final important is teacher design classroom activities that involve guidance and practice in both transactional and interactional speaking. If you succeed in two above skills, you will able to fluent the following skill.

Writing is a medium of communication that represents language through the inscription of signs and symbols. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signs or symbols, usually in the form of a formal alphabet. Motivations for writing teaching include publication, storytelling, correspondence and diary, folding story, picture story, picture and writing and music and writing, etc. Furthermore, teachers need to understand principles of writing method teaching, they contain of 3 main parts are pre-writing (planning, selecting topic, drafting and editing), while writing (revising) and post writing (publishing). Consequently the result of writing is generally called text, and the recipient of text is called a reader.

The reader is who able to read or understand data or information by visual. Reading can unlock thousands of opportunities throughout the world. So learners need to be able to read, whether in their own language or English language. Especially, English language learning because reading also helps them to learn and get English. Consequently, teachers should design activities and select appropriate materials or methodologies with your students. Such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at every level. All of considered, teachers have to design activities with appropriate basic on 4 skill approaches for learners. Besides people are always encouraging teachers to use new things: for example, computers, online sites and mobile devices.

Currently educations as play as technology world, so modern teachers have to apply technology useful in the classroom. There are various techniques and technologies. For example using boards (black board, white board and interactive white board or smart board), flipchart for doing gallery walk (group work), overhead projector (OHP) for showing information, computer by using online programs and internet by using social network like twitter, Google+, Facebook, Blog etc. Likewise, there are authentic materials to support the approach that is blended learning, based from course book and websites (on the internet). In addition using pictures, cards and strips of paper are ones of teaching with technology method. By the way, after teaching, learners were tested and assessed by teachers.

Students are often assessed and tested to see how well they done. There are 2 main types of test item; direct test item (based on 4 macro skill) and indirect test items, for example gap fills, cloze, multiple choice, true or false, jumbled sentences, proofreading and matching. Although teachers assessing learners by testing, they also using assessment. The assessment to develop learners in classroom divide in eight types; formative, summative, informal, diagnostic, placement, progress, achievement and proficiency. Moreover, there is new assessment tool; rubric. What is the “rubric”? A rubric is a multi-purpose scoring guide for assessing student products and performances. A rubric involves four components; task description, scale, dimensions description of the dimensions.

To summarize, in learning and teaching language, you should realize and understand 4 based language skills; listening skill, speaking skill, writing skill and reading skill. Furthermore teachers need to design appropriately activities for their learners’ level. Besides teachers have to assess and test learners for check their developing after they had learned.

Learning inside the classroom (Reflect group presentation) on 15th July 2014 in issue: Teaching listening

        Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basic for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication.

Listening skills can be taught explicitly, through direct instruction and in multiple formats. Some skills can be taught explicitly. Below are links to specific examples to activities where the following skills are taught:

• ·       Relating to similar experiences
• ·       Predicting what will happen next
• ·       Retelling a story in order
• ·       Asking relevant questions (KWL activity referenced below)
• ·       Taking notes
• ·       Analyzing and synthesizing what is read
• ·       Figurative language
• ·       Also, distinguishing fact from opinion
• Some informal classroom opportunities to teach listening include:
• ·       Play mime games to demonstrate body language through physical and facial expressions.
• ·       Before an assembly, discuss the who, what and why of the presentation.
• ·       Discuss what listening “looks like.” How do their bodies look when they are listening?
• ·       Play games involving listening for following directions (drawing an unseen object), understanding what is said (you mean?), remembering what is said (telephone operator game), etc.
• ·       Listen to, write and share a poem a day.
• ·       Sequence the events of the day or week and have students draw a timeline to post on their desks.  

     Steps of teaching

1. 1.   Pre-listening

˗        new vocabulary

˗        pronunciation

˗        grammar and sentence structure

1. 2.   While-listening

˗        activities

1. 3.   Post-listening

˗        exercise

˗        tasks

To sum up, Language learning depends on listening. Listening provides the aural input that serves as the basic for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication.

Learning inside the classroom on 21st July 2014 in issue: Teaching reading

Learning inside the classroom (Reflect group presentation) on 21st July 2014 in issue: Teaching reading

        Reading is the first step into a better life. Reading can unlock thousands of opportunities throughout the world. So students need to be able to read, whether in their own language or English language. Especially, English language learning because reading also helps them to learn and get English. Likewise, there are several types of reading skill.

The article will focus on 3 types of reading teaching, follow up: extensive reading, intensive reading and reading for comprehension. First, pay attention on 2 main reading skills; extensive reading and intensive reading. Extensive reading is reading as much as possible, at a difficulty level at which you can read smoothly and quickly without looking up words or translating to English as you go. The advantage of the reading is to develop the ability to read more fluently. Next an interesting reading type is intensive reading. Intensive reading is the most typically taught method of teaching reading. Some teachers only know this method and believe that by teaching the vocabulary and grammar that is all the learner needs. Moreover, intensive reading strategies contain of the strategies that we recognize; reading for skimming and reading for scanning. The reading will occurs when the learner is focused on the language rather than the text. By the way, more importantly, teachers should design the activities follow the steps of reading skill; pre-reading, while reading and post reading. In particular, the pre-reading is the important base for reading skill. The follow example of pre-reading activity:

 These activities are often fun for both the teacher and student.

Sample pre-reading activities may include:

•   Discussing new vocabulary and trying to attach it to something students already know.
•  Asking students what they know about the topic and from where that information came.
• Looking at the subtitles and asking students to consider anything they know about them.
• Examining the pictures and captions to learn more about what the text is going to say.
• Checking the graphs and maps to discover how they might add meaning to the text.
•   Looking at the bold words.
•  Analyzing who wrote the text and the audience for whom it was originally written.
• Reading the entire first paragraph and asking students what they know about the text.
• Reading the last paragraph and asking students what they know about the text.
•  Reading the first sentence or first two lines in each paragraph and asking students what they now know about the text.
• Asking students to write a question that they anticipate will be answered in the text.

“What are some pre-reading activities

that you use in your classroom?”

                To sum up, all of considered reading skill as the basic for students learning language. Consequently, teachers should design activities and select appropriate materials or methodologies with your students. Such as train schedules, newspaper articles, and travel and tourism Web sites become appropriate classroom materials, because reading them is one way communicative competence is developed. Instruction in reading and reading practice thus become essential parts of language teaching at every level.

Reading skill

Tips on teaching reading comprehension

The video about 

Method for Teaching Reading to Classroom of Students

Powerful Method for Teaching Reading to Classroom of Students

References: https://k12teacherstaffdevelopment.com/tlb/the-importance-of-pre-reading-activities/
                    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPsAuf1ihMk