EEE Week 5 Assignment

When it comes to teaching, one of the most important things is a teaching material, which is the thing that you need for a class or a particular activity. It would be always hard for teachers to choose appropriate materials for their teaching. The most famous and typical material that many teachers use in class might be literature, such as poems, novels, essays, etc. Especially for language teachers, using literature would be an effective way to teach a target language, for learners would be able to naturally acquire language while learning about the stories. Therefore, among many pieces of literature, choosing some that will be effective, instructive, and helpful for students would be challenge for teachers. I believe that a suitable piece of literature should be relevant to students so that they can be interested, and it also needs to be challenging enough to have students not only learn language but also reflect other things beyond the stories. All things considered the poem, "To a Daughter Leaving Home", would be the most suitable for high school teachers.

First of all, since "To a Daughter Leaving Home" relates to many students’ real life experiences, they would be easily motivated to read the poem. According to Keller, a famous pedagogist, motivation plays a key role in teaching and learning. In other words, there is no use in good strategies or environment of learning if a learner is not motivated to learn. Keller says that one of the indispensable things for motivation is “relevance.” As the theme of the poem is teaching a daughter riding a bike and seeing her leave home, and the dad’s emotional changes, it would be familiar for most students. Once the students realize the material is related to their life, they would be interested and motivated. Therefore, choosing a poem, "To a Daughter Leaving Home," which has a familiar and interesting content, would be a great idea when teaching high school students.

In addition, "To a Daughter Leaving Home" has challenging and many practical vocabularies that are used in a real world. When language teachers teach learners a target language, most are concerned about vocabulary. One of the teachers’ roles is to make sure that vocabularies students would be learned should not be too easy nor too difficult, which means it should be challenging. In the poem, "To a Daughter Leaving Home," some words such as “taught,” “in surprise,” and “screaming with laughter” are easy enough to understand context of the poem, at the same time there are some challenging vocabs such as “lope,” “wobble,” and “sprint.” One of the reasons why the vocabs in the poem are useful is it has many practical words. These words, such as “loping along beside you,” “you pulled ahead down the path,” “kept waiting,” and “you grew smaller,” are not only for the literature but also for the real world. If teachers explain that the vocabularies are useful and practical, students would be able to practice the words in the context of the real life.

In conclusion, many pedagogues put emphasis on an “authentic task”, which means learning should relate to learners’ real life. To give the authentic tasks is one of the important roles teachers should play. Therefore, teachers should be sensitive to choosing the materials they will use. "Like To a Daughter Leaving Home," it should be interesting and relating to learners, and it should have many challenging yet practical vocabularies in it. If so, learners must be motivated and be able to learn and apply it to their real life.