Journal 2

Today, due to unemployment, many people are going back to school, which are mainly graduate schools. Accordingly, since the achievement of academic skills depend highly on reading skills, making use of those skills while reading.
For me, as I am an undergraduate student, I'm preparing for admission to law schoo, which requires an LSAT(Law Scholastic Aptitude Test) score. When studying for this exam, I come across pretty difficult vocabulary words, especially implemented in the RC(Reading Comprehension) section.
Thus, I have utilized and always utilize strategies that I'm learning in this class. I use skills, such as recognizing words in context and drawing inference. As I read long passages, it's sometimes an arduous task to know every single word in detail. Therefore, I try to make the best sense out of an unfamiliar word by looking at it in context with other sentences or phrases. Moreover, I try to draw inferences from the given information from the passage, since there are some questions that actually ask me to make some inferences based on the passage.
Conversely, I almost never use skills, such as retrieving material from long-term memory or categorizing words and clauses. The main reason for this is that it is not such a practical method to retrieve material from the long-term memory at the same time I'm reading the text or passage. Rather, I have to use certain strategies to go back to the passage to retrieve specific information that I had forgotten as a short-term memory. Moreover, categorizing words and clauses takes a long time for me to make use of it. For instance, it's not probable for me to distinguish formal aspects while I'm reading about certain spheres that may be considered odd to me.

Journal 1

The reason why my brother doesn't want to go to Hakwon is that he is fed up with the boring memorization of words and mechanical drills of phonics. Even though phonics, by teaching them the sounds of the alphabet itself and the sounds produced by blending the alphabets in diverse ways, is seemingly the most effective way of teaching reading to kids, it is limited in that it might not provide them any more motivation if they reach a certain point. Thus, to give interest to him and to provide him with a motivation to learn, I suggest three methods: the storytelling method, kinesthetic method, and the game method.
First, the storytelling method would be more than enough to induce children to learn more. It focuses on teaching reading by utilizing many kinds of storybooks that might incite interest of all students. The teacher could take three steps in introducing the method to studens. Step one is to write on the board at most 3 vocabulary items they have to learn. The teacher can call on students to pronounce them, and if it's not pronounced correctly, he can correct the mistakes. After all students are aware of the pronunciation of all vocabulary items, he can then go on to reading the storybook he had brought for the class. Since it's soothing and provocative in repect to content to students, they would focus and also try to find the vocabulary items they learned before the reading. Finally, they are given the chance to read on their own the story books that may be of their interest. In this way, they would acquire automaticity as well as improvement in English skills.
Second, the kinesthetic method can be effective in getting unmotivated students to get back on track. The kinesthetic method makes use of certain body parts in learning language. Taking account of the fact that young children lack concentration for even 30 minutes, this will indeed make them concentrate more and not stray from the learning process. This can be done by first introducing about 3 or 4 words to students. Then, give them color markers or crayons to just follow what is written on the board. The teacher should, in this case, tell them that it's okay to make mistakes to lower the inhibition. When they are finished with their coloring or painting the words, the teacher steps in to deductively introduce the words and their meanings to sudents. Afterwords, students can engage in reading texts that includes the vocabulary that they have previously acquired by using their hands.
Lastly, the game method is one of the most effective, according to a recent research in UCLA, method in actually making children voluntarily learn language on their own. There are so many games in this world, and some of them can be implemented to teaching language to young children. One game can be Monopoly. Monopoly is a game that can be won when one rotates around the game board once faster than others. Thus, by putting in questions related to vocabulary items or main topic of a paragraph, children will strive to answer those questions only to win the game of Monopoly. Ultimately, by giving them entertainment, they will not only maintain interest in learning English but they will also reach a higher level of English proficiency.