Teaching refers to the process of sharing knowledge and know-how with other people. Teaching is done within specific disciplines and areas of learning. Students all over the world develop a different liking for different teachers because people possess the teaching skill differently. Some scholars believe that teaching is more than a calling than a skill. In a nutshell, there is more than meets the eye in teaching than just sharing the knowledge to your students. An excellent tutor has to use specific skills to be successful in his/ her lessons. My topic of interest in this analysis is “Letter Writing.” The video I have watched is of an instructor talking about writing of a complaint letter, guiding on the specific steps on how a student ought to frame a complaint letter.
The Core Concept
The core concept in the video instruction I just watched is the introduction and the meaning of the topic in the instruction. The instructor must introduce the core concept with a background definition as well as the format of the letter. Mentioning that the complaint letter is a type of a formal letter offers learners with great insights into what the instructor is just about to talk about. In any learning session, getting to connect with the background information helps boosts the learner’s ability to conceptualize the idea in the lesson and to prepare the mind for the lesson just about to begin. Additionally, the learner gets to understand relevant contexts about the lesson and separates what he/ she already knows about what he/ she does not know.
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In the video, the move to introduce complaint letter as an official letter opens the mind of a learner who already knows about letter writing. A learner who had previously learned about letter writing is probably informed of the two types of a letter and would gladly know this since it falls under one of the two.
Description of the Core Concept
To effectively teach about the basic concepts of writing a complaint letter, the instructor offered a step-by-step account of how the format ought to be made. The instructor relays the information in a slow language, keeping pauses after short explanations. This is important in enabling a learner to grasp each line of instruction without missing a single one. Pause procedure is an important element in teaching because it allows learners time to conceptualize the idea, review it and connect it to the previous one (Brame, 2016). This enhances learning and grants the learner an opportunity to learn more.
Additionally, the instructor in the video gave clear instructions and pointed out some possible mistakes that one ought not to tom make in formatting the complaint letter. In addition to instructing on what ought to be done, it is also necessary to teach what should not be done to lead the learner away from a possible mistake. This technique is based on the instructor’s experience with other students helpful in speeding up the learning process. Learning continues with corrections, pointing out imminent mistakes helps the learner to avoid future corrections.
Vella’s Four I’s
Jane Vella presented the four I’s of dialogue education that teachers ought to apply to improve the process of teaching. They include Induction, Input, Implementation and Integration. According to Vella (2000), the four I’s framework enable educators to structure a conversation with their students and improve the teaching process. Induction is the process of connecting learners to what they know in a bid to enable them to understand what they are yet to know. Input involves the process of introducing learners to new concepts, skills and knowledge. This is the point of teaching the main ideas in a lesson. Implementation involves guiding the teacher leading the learner in practising whatever is learned. Integration involves applying the learned skill into real life.
In the video I watched, the instructor applied induction and Input. The instructor specifically introduced the idea of complaint writing as a form of letter writing. This somehow introduces to the concept of letters, known by many. Input too, was applied by talking about the idea of complaint writing and giving directives on how it is done. Nevertheless, the instructor failed to use implementation and integration. The two remaining I’s involve direct interaction with a learner, something not possible with video instruction.
Type of Information Used
The video instruction I watched was comprised of a procedural kind of information. The instructor relays the information through a step-by-step manner where each information includes a specific way to handle a concept. Procedural information in the context of teaching refers to the involves teaching about skill and a way of doing something. In this kind of a teaching lesson, the learner should capture the concept and practice it over and over again to understand how to go about it. Moreover, procedural information is characterized by the repetition of task and monitoring one’s improvement rate.
The topic “How to write a complaint letter” seeks to teach the learner on how he/ she would put down a complaint letter when need be. The instructor includes the steps on where the addresses ought to be placed. Additionally, the instruction points out what the learner should include as content in each paragraph of the paper. The instructor also points out the essential elements of the cr complaint letter, including the ideal phrases to be used and various key features such as subject, salutation and addresses, among others.
Materials Used
The video instruction I watched involves a voice of the instructor issuing direct guidance on how to perform a task. Voice alone could not present the lesson better and enable a learner to grasp what the tutor covers. The instructor uses a letter template in teaching how to write a formal complaint letter. The template is intended at displaying to the learner what verbal speech could not easily deliver. Specifically, the instructor uses this material to show the exact positions in a paper where specific parts of the letter should be placed. For example, the template displays the precise position of the address, the title, the body and the salutation of the complaint letter.
Indeed, the material effectively enabled me to understand the steps quickly because they offered a demonstration to the idea taught by the instructor in the video. Materials are very effective in teaching. This is because they add value to text and verbal speech. Specifically, materials aide the interaction between the teacher and his/ her students. In addition to that, learning materials also speeds up the process of teaching and learning.
Loftiness of Language
The instructor uses simple English language and fewer jargon words that can be understood by anyone. The only vocabulary involved in the video is the vocabulary for letter writing. Using simple language is important for the lesson because it enables the tutor’s message to reach through everyone, including those with low understanding of language. The tutor in the video tends to speak the language with some foreign accent, an indication that it is not their first language. All the same, her clarity is upfront amid her accent, and I could capture all the words used in the video.
The instructor also used short sentences and made it even better to understand. Short sentences are easy to comprehend over longer ones because they carry less information with them at a particular time. Additionally, in the video, the rate of speech is a moderate rate which also enhanced my understanding. A moderate rate of speech is reasonable because it enables easy comprehension of the message in the speech. In some instances, the instructor repeated the critical messages in the instruction as a way of stressing to the learner, their importance. In a nutshell, the language used in the video could be understood very easily.
Distraction
Just like with any other student at any level, distraction is almost inevitable. Learning through a YouTube video subjected me to an array of distractions both from my background and within the website I was using. Occasional noise from my environment caused music and conversations of other people captured my attention and prompted me to pause the video from time to time before resuming back again after some time. It was not easy to avoid such distractions. Nevertheless, some noise was manageable.
Distractions also came from YouTube. The website is characterized by multiple advertisements which pop up on the screen from time to time during watching. My lesson not an exception of this and ads could pope up to distract me. Moreover, YouTube suggests other videos based on a user’s watching habit. These suggestions too acted as a distraction. I dealt with both distractions by making avoiding them and fixing concentration to the video. It is the only choice I had to deal with it at the time. For the frequent popup ads, I had to skip them from time to time until I was done watching the tutorial video.
Intelligences
The tutorial video I watched was resourceful and educative. In my judgement, the tutor exhibits linguistic/ verbal intelligence. The instructor can speak fluently and arranges his points quite clearly with utmost clarity. Understanding the concept in the video is mostly due to the tutor’s ability to correctly and eloquently speak out the key points. This is helpful to the learning process and enables any kind of learner, including those with special needs to grasp the idea because of the art of good speech as shown by the instructor.
Like I have said before, teaching is regarded to be more of a calling than a career. Possessing this specific intelligence is proof of the tutor’s personal ability to succeed in the work. I can affirm that my ability to understand the concept in the video was contributed mostly by the instructor’s ability to speak eloquently and arrange his speech well. Indeed, and has Garner suggested in his theories, the instructor is word smart. I cannot conclusively say that the instructor does not possess the other intelligences. This is because the video is just a one scripted piece and no other interaction existed.
How it was Experiential
The tutorial is experiential in a couple of ways, making it an even better educative peace. Firstly, the instructor offers me concrete experience because, in as much as I have written letters before, a complaint letter has never crossed my desk. Making an attempt to write a complaint letter, as explained by the instructor will be a completely new experience for me. On the same note, I can say that the tutorial offers abstract conceptualization because it develops my letter writing idea. Active experimentation is also imminent because after learning, I will have to try out and see my level of understanding of the concept. These couple of experiences importantly exist in the tutorial. When a tutor connects a learner to learning experiences, the learning process tends to produce more fruits to the student.
References
Brame, C. (2016). Active learning. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching .
Vella, J. K. (2000). Taking learning to task: Creative strategies for teaching adults . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
