week 4

week 4: Skill-building Websites for Reading/writing skills and technology-enhanced Lesson Plans

 

As  it is entitled, this week focuses on two skills: reading and writing. But what is more important in what we have seen this week is the scope of vocabulary in English Language Teaching.

We've read a lot of articles from different web sites. These new things we've been learning have not only been changing the teachers we are but they are changing our students as well.

I was applauded by my students the day following my reading of the documents related to the use of CALL in reading and writing. I was sharing with them what I had learned from my reading. What I liked best and they did approve was 'the five-finger-method' usually used by our American colleagues to recommend a book for their students. We have always urged our students to read no matter how difficult is the text. From now on, I know we have to take into account the level of our students, especially in an EFl context. For this, Larry J. Mikulecky wrote '

In order for benefits to occur, the reader must already understand the majority of vocabulary on a page. For beginning and intermediate level students, this means relatively simple language such as that found in children's and young adult literature.   Laufer (1989) and Liu and Nation (1985) demonstrated that unless a reader has control of at least 95% of words on a page, it is unlikely that he or she will be able to use context to guess the meaning of unknown words.  Subsequent research (Hsueh-Chao and Nation, 2000), indicates that previous mastery of even higher percentages of vocabulary (i.e. 98% or more) is associated with the most benefit in new vocabulary growth.

The tasks were useful too. We read a lot about lesson planing integrating a new technology. Besides, we have made, this week, a new step regarding our project task. We had to identify a student/teacher-oriented issue in our class. 

 

Week 4 has been particularly useful for me in so far as I have learned new things about lesson planing, vocabulary teaching.

Week 3

     Week 3 began on Monday April 15th 2013. It is for me one of the most useful parts of the course. This week' s title is: Skill-building Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious.

     The week starts as usual with very interesting readings. The main topic being Teaching Aural/Oral Skills, we had to read a lot of documents on how to build listening and speaking skills using CALL (Computer Assisted Learning Language). All the documents have discussed the neglect of these two skills in Second and Foreign Language.classrooms. Julia Gong thinks ''the introduction of computers in language classrooms has opened a new door to both teachers and learners.'' What I like best  in her article The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills: is that she has clearly demonstrated that the computer environment is highly motivating and less threatening psychologically.  Therefore, as modern teachers, we ought to change the traditional language learning context.
       The same idea is developed by Lindsey Miller  in Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials. She focuses on the scope of listening in ESL/EFL today and how important it is to change things by using technologies. Something new I have learned from Miller's article is that in the daily communication listening is the language skill which is most often used ( Listening +40%, speaking 35%, reading 16% and writing 9%).
     In a nutshell, the philosophy behind these readings is that computers and other technologies allow students a greater degree of independence. We have discussed about all this in Nicenet and as usual the discussion was fruitful.

     Another important task we have done this week is to create a Delicious page. A new discovery for me and for sure this will help me and my students work more effectively. With the Delicious page I can from now on save my bookmarks. 
     The last but not the least activity was to read and discuss a past sample project. With this task I know better what I am expected to do by the end of the program regarding the project.

Week 3 has particularly risen my interest in the employment of CALL in English Language Teaching. 

week 2

The week 2 of the 'Webskills' course started on Monday April 8th 2013 at 8 am Pacific Time. For week 2, the focus is on web searching tools and creating behavioral learning objectives. 

We have learned a lot of things with the readings especially how to write learning objectives, following the ABCD method. The letters stand for: A (audience, meaning who are your learners?); B (behavior, meaning what do you expect them to be able to do?); C (condition, how to do it?) and D (degree, meaning how well will the behavior be performed?).  Experts' views about learning objectives are highlighted in the documents. One of them was Bloom with his very interesting taxonomy that helps to classify objectives. The pedagogical implications are to help us to state explicitly what we want our students to gain from a specific lesson. If the statements are explicit the teacher indeed knows what to accomplish and how to do it.

From the readings, we have also had guidelines for creating further searching. Google has so far been the sole searching tool used by many people. Now it's obvious that depending on our needs we have a variety of tools for better searches. Among those I had never discovered before we have: Intute, Surfwax, iseek Education to name a few. 

Insights into these documents have made possible very fruitful discussions through Nicenet. The first is about Web searching and the other about the ABCD objective. We were asked to apply what we have read and to give our impression.  Regarding the ABCD method I have particularly learned to be more precise and concise when planning a lesson. The best thing I like in it is the evaluation level of this method and the fact that the learner is at the center of the lesson.

In addition, we have made in this second week the first steps of our project task. We have to bring into our class 'a technology inspired change'. In fact, we experiment in our classroom a new technology that we have never used before. I tried it last Friday and it was wonderful. This is a good way to enhance learners' motivation and consequently to make the teaching/learning process more effective. 

To sum up, it is not an exaggeration to say that I have been learning how to teach by principles. The knowledge is very sophisticated creating a positive shift. Week 2 has been very practical. The instructor is intervening less and less, letting the participants actively working themselves. We are indeed enjoying both theory and practice and an interesting interactivity. 

   

week 1

REFLECTIVE WRITING

This is a 10 weeks teacher online training with the American English Institute, Department of Linguistics, University of Oregon.

 The course started on Monday, April 1 st 2013 at 8 am pacific time. We received a mail from Donna Shaw, our instructor, with very clear instructions regarding the course materials, websites, and documents.

For the first topic '' Self Introductions”  we had to talk about ourselves, our professional background and everything that is related to us and which can be useful for the participants. Then everyone joined the class discussion on Nicenet  where we posted our introduction and discussed with the other participants. It was a very interesting task because we learned a lot from the experience of other participants. It was also an opportunity for us to brainstorm about the course topic. Consequently, we set a real learning community because since then we have been sharing through the three main sites of the course but also through different social networks.

The following day, on Tuesday April 2^nd, we were given some documents to read in order to prepare the next discussion. The documents dealt with the Ground Rules, the grading rubric and blogging. The documents are very interesting in so far as we discovered new ideas about classroom management and blogging.

On Wednesday 3^rd, we went back to Nicenet for Topic2 ‘’Discussion’’ to discuss about the Ground Rules and how we are evaluated. We posted our positions and commented some participants’ views.

Thursday April 4^th 2013 corresponds to the 4^th day of week 1. We were asked to create a blog, share our URL and write about what we have done so far. It was a little stressing at the beginning but it was done finally. The discussion on Nicenet, thereafter, helped a lot especially for colleagues who did not manage to do themselves. I really appreciated for instance when Monica Popluharova advised me to change my URL and assisted in posting the right URL.


The Webskills Google Map is an optional activity but it is very useful for at least two reasons. Not only will it help to use Google Map in our classroom but we can easily identify our fellow participants as well.

The instructions are well designed and very clear that’s why we are getting more and more involved. This is a testimony that ‘’a teacher is like a brick layer’’. At the beginning, I was very stressed, I was skeptical about my capacities to do all this myself. I am looking forward to practicing with my students.