All posts by Corn eavesdropper

PhD candidate Department of Entomology Penn State University
Reflections on Final Group Project

Healthy life style

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One of my dream is living in a farm and establishing a small ecological  system with lots of interactions between animals and plants. In that system I would act as a facilitator and let the spirit of life to be spread around me. I like watching growth of living organisms and progress of ecological sequences. Going to farmers market was like a reminder for my old dream. I saw some people that make their own business by managing organic farms. I can’t live like Amish people but I can imagine myself moderating a modern sustainable farm by respecting to mother nature.

It was my first time to do an interview with American farmers. I enjoyed chatting with them since all of them were enthusiastic about their business and liked speaking with people about necessity of their healthy organic products. But as you can see in the interview, that Amish guy has a special accent representing a different accent in the farmers community of Pennsylvania. I asked questions from farmers (vendors) about their products, establishing their own business and their revenue.

I think with a common knowledge about a topic you can start chatting with people and make a proper dialogue with them. Having a plan for such interactions could help you to ask suitable questions and enhance your listening efficiency. Thoughtful questions could enhance your confidence in the dialogues.

Finally I should thank Xin for the suggestion of the activity and making such professional videos.

ESL114G Final Group Project PPT

TED Talk Analysis

Eavesdropping on plants by Professor Jack Schultz

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Fortunately I found a ted talk speech by Prof Jack Schultz one of the inventors of “talking trees” theory which I have introduced to you in my microteaching session. Here you can watch his ted talk where he described different stresses related to a plant’s life. He started his talk with describing these stresses from plant’s point of view and continued to the strategies taken by plants against these stressors. After a brief description of materials and methods of his research, he named some applications of his work in the future. In conclusion, starting with a transition phrase of “take home messages” he reviewed whole lecture and emphasized the necessity of changing audience’s mindset about the silence of the plants.

The 3D animations and the proper pictures helped lecturer to give the audience, a sense of the application of his study in the real life. In some photos, he used humor to make the atmosphere funny.

During his lecture, Jack Schultz played with his hands and moved in the room to share more eye contact with listeners. Although you can’t feel lots of enthusiasm in the speech, but his movement and eye contact was enough to connect him with the audience.

Professor Schultz divided his long sentences to thought groups pretty well. For example you can see that from 6:01’ to 6:11’:”When plants are attacked/ by insects/, they hurled/ a bouquet /of molecules into the air/. I ‘m picturing here/ many of molecules/ that emerge from a corn plant/, when it’s being attacked/ by an insect.”

Intonation of speaker changed during the talk to emphasize keywords. For example at 0:20 you can hear this pattern …”actually a plant’s life is pretty stressful”. (Stress on plant and stress and more on stress). An example of Wh- question intonation could be seen at 9:15 when he says: How does it find the Caterpillar? (Stress on Cater- and falling intonation for rest of that)

As wrap up I would like to say that Prof. Schultz did a great job to give talk about a complicated concept in a simple, clear way. His proper pace and smooth transition with lots of suitable pictures and real daily life examples helped the audience to bond with his research of interest.

Eavesdropping on plants

Reflections on Micro-Teaching

Talking trees

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I chose the topic of “talking trees theory” because it was a relevant issue to my research field and I had some background information about it. This background could help me to feel more comfortable, but in the other hand it also could be critical since when you have precedent knowledge of a concept you might use some jargons and terms unintentionally or give the speech in a difficult way to understand. So it would be a challenge for me as an expert in the field of plant communication to share a special topic with my classmates in a way that they learn some. Based on the feedback notes and short test at the end of the presentation, I think that I could deliver the concept to the audience.

I really like teaching and I see teaching as a way to bond with new people and get their ideas and feedback for making progress in my career. I think my enthusiasm is the most important feature of mine in teaching. This will lead me to success in teaching. I played a video at the beginning of the talk to grab attention of the audience. I prepared my power point slides in the simplest way to avoid distraction. I utilized proper transition between slides to make my speech more fluently. By asking questions from attendants, I wanted them to participate more in the process of learning.

Although I tried to embed video and pictures to my micro-teaching, I think it wasn’t enough and maybe I need more pictures/graphs to give the audience more sense of the topic. Another issue that I could have done is time management of the speech to cover more details about the concept.

While my micro-teaching ended up after 10 minutes, some of my classmates believed that I wasn’t fast enough. This different interpretation shows contradicting position of the teacher and students in a class. Such different points of view could also be seen in teaching-learning interaction where deep understanding of the concept by teacher doesn’t mean that it leads to better learning in the students.

Talking Trees

As wrap up, I found the best way to teach is putting myself in students’ shoes. More participation of students in the class by asking questions or comments from them could help instructor to have a self-evaluation about teaching-learning efficiency and improve the possible weaknesses of interaction.

Email Communication

Question about the challenge question

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Dear Gary

Back to the challenge question you assigned for us in the frontiers of insect science class, I need some clarification about the question. So, may I have an appointment with you next week to talk about it? I would like to mention my course schedule is Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:30 to 13:30, so anytime other than that works for me. Please let me know what time you would be free.

Sincerely Yours

Arash

Reflections on Discussion Leading

Stereotypes of nations in the U.S. (Reflection Post)

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Iranian stereotype in the U.S. media has been always a challenging topic for me, which has led to shyness in my public attendance. I have had the same internal conflict as Maz Jobrani says in his Ted Talk show. Some part of me hates that stereotype and some part acceptsit. I do not belong to any part of the Iranian government, but I do not like generalization of any culture to terrorism or fundamentalism, etc. I believe that national stereotypes, which mean fixed idea about what a nation is like, end to misunderstanding about different cultures throughout the world. As international students it is acrucial topic for us to know how ordinary people and not educated ones think about our cultures or nationalities in the U.S. Based on the participation of my classmates, I would like to interpret it was a hot topic.

 

Using a cartoon map of national stereotypes of Asian countries and sharing a video of Maz Jobrani’s performance were my great hooks to grab the attention of my classmates. I tried to talk less and give more time to my classmates to share their opinions. I emphasized their points by repeating their arguments to give them positive feedback and trigger others to talk more about the idea. I tried to keep my eye contact during the discussion to persuade participants to discuss more.

I wish I could have expressed my feeling more at the beginning of discussion. I practiced on my wording and phrasing, but as if I was so nervous at the start point, I could not do that properly. Maybe talking more in front of my classmates would help me to heal the anxiety. I tried to give feedback to participants, but I feel that it would be better, if I would have mentioned their comments more at the wrap up section.

It was wonderful that everyone said something about the topic. It’s a good sign that they felt comfortable to discuss. Although some of my classmates were interested in the topic and hand out, others had complains about clarity and link between questions and some demanded more specificity in the topic.

As whole, I think it was a great opportunity for me to find out my ability in leading a discussion. Even though all limitations and deficiencies in the debate, I could gain participation of my classmates. Utilizing body language flow the discussion and giving feedback to participants’ comments energize cycle of debate. All of the above stands on more practice on vocabulary with real enthusiasm.   

 

Mapping-Stereotypes-Yanko-Tsvetkov-3

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmXiItk49Gw