WEEK 5

 

Dear All,

It is Monday, yet I  am already exhausted. There are so many online assignments apart from the regular workload.

I am going to İzmir for an accreditation  meeting.  The School of Foreign Languages in Turkey are interested in quality in education, and we have an annual meeting with school directors/representatives. Last year,  the school representatives with accreditation experience were appointed to a committee. I am one of the committee members trying to do our best. We are altogether  4 colleagues from different universities with sort of similar experience. We aim to set up a national accreditation body. The group dynamic is high and everyone is so eager to offer/try something. We are about to finalize our 'To Do' list, and in this respect, the standards, sub-committess, draft regulations, and organizational chart are ready. We will present our work to the other representatives sometime in October.

What are we going to to this week?

1-  Rubrics, project-based learning (PBL) and WebQuests. 

I found   the NCLRC's Web site so informative in terms of some tips of language teaching as well as lesson plans.

I briefly tried to answer Robert's questions:

1- How can PBL be used to help motivate students more?

In her article, Suzan Gear mentioned about her experience. Briefly, she decided to use a project-based curriculum. She guided her students to find out what they needed, and they came up with an idea of writing the recipies they inherited orally from the previous generations. Students brought the ingredients and while cooking they learnt and made use of the terms how ho measure them. Meanwhile they wrote down the recepies and made a cookbook. See more of her projects here.

Such kinds of personal involvements result in a product created/made mostly by students. Thus, it is more collaborative and fun. Besides, it improves the self-motivation.


2- How can PBL be incorporated with technology in your class - or alternatively what limitations are
there to using PBL in your class?

A drama activity incorporated with technology might be helpful. Students can be provided some online scripts and they vote for them. They they watch the original play online and act it out.

Of course there are some limitations. It is hard to find a drama play with a suitable level. Besides, the number of characters and students is another issue. Moreover, some students do not really feel confident in front of the public, which might be discouraging. Yet, they can help backstage.

3- What is the role of rubrics and/or alternative assessment within PBL?

Alternative assessment is performance based by means of which student can evaluate their learning and learn from the evaluation process. It is ,thus, based on authentic task and it focuses on real-life communication. Since students' involvement is important, they need rubrics and checklists to evaluate themselves and their peers.

4- How can PBL, rubrics and/or alternative assessment be used to promote independent learning?

As stated above PBL requires students' involvement.

As for the rubrics and checklists, first teachers should use checklists and rubrics themselves and then students should get familiar with them to begin to assess their and their peers' performance and provide feedback.

Students become independent learners when they are able to assess heir own performance and recognize what they need. Thus, they need to set SMART goals; Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Trackable.

In addition to SMART goals, they need guided practice with assessment tools. Checklist and rubrics are important in this respects. Yet, they need to be guided more to be more aware of their metacognitive and task-based strategies:

-   Metacognitive strategies ; planning, managing thier own learning, monitoring themselves while working on a task , and evaluationg themselves after completing a task, and
-   Task-Based strategies;
•   using what they know (using their background knowledge, making inferences, making predictions, personalization, transfaring from L1 or other languages, paraphrasing),
•   using their imagination (using an image, using real objects),
•   using their organizational skills (applying a rule, categorizing words, using visuals, summarizing, and focusing on key words
•   using variety of resources (using reference books , dictionaries, etc, working with others, and using their inner resources)

According to the article 'Motivate Learners', students need to know that different language skills evolve in different amount of time, and knowing a language means comprehension and communiction by means of the target language.

Apart from those, portofios are important since they are graded over time and systematic.

To sum up, PBL, rubrics and checklists all keep students alert and make them compare themselves to others.

2- Creating our rubric

Here is my rubric for compare & contrast essay. I used RubiStar, which makes it so easy while preparing your own rubric.

3- A technology-related change or potential "solution" to my class

Like many of you, my students are exam oriented and mostly, they just mind exam scores. Since my new group is adult learners and they are supposed to be teachers of different fields such as maths, management, and architecture, I am able to apply different activities in spite of thier being crazy about scores.

Unfortunately, due to my work load, I have to share my class with a colleague and will be able to see them every other week. I do not want to quit teaching them since I have the chance to use new things I am learning here with them.

I talked to my colleague and I requested him to remind my online tasks to students when I am absent.

Well, I have already opened a class blog, and I started to inform them what to do. Sometimes they request some spelling, speaking or listening activities, so I post such kinds of activities to cater for their needs.

I hope they will actively make use of the blog, so in the near future I am planning to make them prepare a presentation and evaluate each other based on the rubric I will create.

As Robert mentioned

- my project problem: lack of time with my students,

- my solution : building a class blog to stay in touch and keep students working on assignments.

4- Creating a WebQuest:   A  sample of WebQuest and a sample of PBL

 
Robert provided great examples of a PLB at http://susangaer.com/studentprojects/ and a WebQuest s at http://www.webquest.org/search/index.php.

Zunal and QuestGarden are amazing to prepare our own WebQuests. I used Zunal to prepare my WebGuest on a reading class. Here is my lesson plan. Meanwhile, I am so impressed by my friends' lesson plans....

WEEK 4

Dear All,

Today, 23rd April, is a very special day in my country because it is the National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. It is a present given by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, to children. He believed that children are our future and they deserve the best. Thus, this special day is celebrated together with guest children all around the world.

HAPPY CHILDREN'S DAY

It is almost the end of academic year. We have only one more month , so both faculty and students are impatiently looking forward to the summer holiday. It is getting warmer and warmer everyday, which is one of the reasons why students are so sleepy in the class but so hyperactive outside.



As for the course, I am trying to do my best to complete my assignments. I have already learnt lots of things. Since I am not used to working at my pace, it is another challange for me.

Our  first task was reading articles about ways to use computers to enhance the teaching of reading, writing, and vocabulary.  I read the following articles;

1- 'Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-Book' by Mei-Ya Liang.
He provides books for extensive reading and asks students to rank the books based on some criteria. Students skim the books and vote for them

2- 'Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension' by Andreea I. Constantinescu.

She states that vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension are interrelated. By means of L1 literacy, a reader can make use of top-down (comprehension is achieved by using background knowledge and making predictions) and bottom-up (fundamental basics of letter and sound recognition), strategies and activate his/her schemata. In this respect, vocabulary knowledge is important in reading proficiency. She adds that teachers should be aware of the benefits of technology integrated lessons.

Among the multi-skill websites,  I chose http://a4esl.org, which offers grammar exercises focusing on a grammar item at a time, I designed the following ABCD objective:

A: 15 Adult students at Intermediate level
B: Students are required to use grammar correctly
C: http://a4esl.org/, where each exercise focuses on a specific grammar point such as subject/verb agreement, participles, and the like.
D: Students are required to be 99% correct since the grammar questions in the national exam are challenging

As for the project step, Robert requested us to focus on a problem in our lesson   that we could overcome by means of technology.

I think my students are good at grammar. They know grammar rules by heart. However, they have the lack of ability to put their knowledge into practice.

I may set up a class wiki so that they can be more productive and aware of both their and each other's performance.

The final task of the week is to prepare a technology enhanced lesson plan. Robet wanted us to use his temple. I checked Baltimore County Public Schools Office of Instructional Technology website, which is an amazing school interms of technology. I makes use of many tools such as Wordle, Voki, VoiceThread, Edmodo, and the like.

Sorting out some time and reading my friends' lesson plans, I recognized that my first plan actullay was primative. Though the updated version is not amazing, I belive it is far much better. Here is my lesson plan. I thought BombayTV is interesting to evaluate students' tense knowledge. I also suggested  animato for a slide show and pimpampum if my students are short of pictures.

My colleague Abdouse from Senegal has a great idea. He making use of survey monkey is able to give instant feedback to his students, which I will think of.
  

WEEK 3

 

There are so many things to do this week. Yet, I am trying to do my best to do the assignments and to check some classmates' blogs. It is almost impossible for me to read everthing of course. What I have recognized that some friends are so descriptive and creative on their blog posts. I am, on the other hand, more plain in the language. I mean I usually post our tasks and my study. I like it when people reflect their personality indeed. I wish I were more like them. I don't think that it is because of the time factor. Everybody is busy and has to deal with multi-tasks at a time. It is more about personality...

1- This week's  discussion topic is about CALL and Oral/Aural Skills.

I started reading the assigned articles first.

Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials by Lindsey Miller

In her article Lindsey Miller states that among the receptive and productive skills, listening has been given the least importance , and thought that it cannot be taught but developed by learners’ own endevours. That is why, not much research has been conducted until recently. She, thus, using authentic materials, suggests pre- (a warm –up activity to activate the learners’ schemata), while-(focusing on specific listening skills), and post listening  (extended discussion) steps to develop listening skills.

It is easy to obtain authentic listening materials from the radio stations (verbal clues), TV channels/ videos (both verbal and non-verbal clues), and the internet/CD-ROM (online help with glossaries and scripts).

Miller and Flowerdew compared academic listening textbooks and authentic lectures in 1997, and they outlined the differences.

New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation by Maria Busa

In this article the importance of CALL applications, by means of which learners learn at heir own pace, and CAPT systems , which provide learners with private, stress-free practice with individualized and instantaneous feedback on pronunciation are mentioned.

As stated in the article, pronuciation has positive impact on  one’s self confidence and social interaction. Yet, it is not so easy to apply prosodic patterns in L2 because of inadequate materials, and teachers’ lack of interest. Still, in spite of the advanced technology, teachers are considered best correctors.

The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills by Julia Gong

By means of CALL, it is now more possible to for language learners to use their interactive skills. Two aspects of spoken language competence are mechanical aspect and meaningful aspect (Pennington, 1995). CALL in mechanical aspect is mainly pronunciation drills. Learners now are able to record their voice, and it can be evaluated by the computer. Though it has advantages in terms of repetitive feauture and stress free environment, it is still not know to what extend deviation from the model is acceptable. As for the meaningful aspect, the computer is able to offer anly a micro-world where learners practice the target language, which means they work on computers but talk to them.
Based on Witt and Young (2000) research, a computerr based pronunciation scoring system is possible to give right feedback on a student's phonetic segments.
In short, teachers should pay attention to pros and cons while employing CALL in their classroom settings.

Some Techniques for Teaching Pronunciation by David F. Falton

In his article, he states that pronunciation is given the least importance among the language skills mainly due to teachers' lack of phonetics knowledge. Besides, L1 is a big hurdle in some languages like Arabic and Spanish.
Falton recommends some activities/exercises that he himself has appied in his lessons and found invaluable. As an example, he wrote nine words each starting with 'P' and ending with 'T'. He numbered those words which included long and short vowels. He asked the students to listen to one of those words and found which one they heard. His main purpose was to check whether students got confused short vowels with long ones or not. Then he presented more words and asked them to number those words.
Another excersise was a picture drawing exercise. He gave the instructions, and some students due to their L1 drew something totally different. As a result, the students had fun and laughed at themselves.
I agree with Falton that such activities increase self-awareness. 

I have had the chance to go over the following web pages, which makes me feel like each one of them is a pandora's box waiting for us to be explored.

Randall's Cyber Listening Lab is an amazing listening resource with lots of everday conversations with adult and children's voice. It also provides easy, medium, and difficult levels of audio and audio-visual tasks and quizzes with tapescripts for various topics and purposes.

Listening Real English Video provides graded videos with captions. Students have the chance to listen to a word and record their voice.

http://www.onestopenglish.com  has so many categories such as Business, ESP, ESOL, and the like.  Contolled speaking, miscellaneous worksheets, storrytelling, discussion, pronunciation, and role-play- where authors suggest some activities- are among graded speaking lesson plans. This website also have a thread which includes popular, commented, and e-mailed articles, activities, or lesson plans.

http://esl.about.com  offers graded conversation lesson plans in ESL, EFL and business English.

http://www.esl-galaxy.com/speaking.html has ESL and EFL games, worksheets, videos and lesson plans for young learners. Those communicative activities can be adaptable for young adults and and suitable for speaking and writing.

Robert’s site is an invaluable resource in terms of the variety of links such as segmentals, supra-segmantals,  speeach and accent, videos, recording on- line, software, conferences, journals, organizations, links to researchers, links to research oriented articles geared towards general audiences,  links to general accent articles,  and links to metalinks.

I had already watched and uploaded German Coast Guard and   Pink Panther Hamburger, which are distinctive examples of misuderstanding, into my blog before I came across them here. To be honest, I am so impressed by Accent Amy Walker. The actress is gifted.

Vocaroo  is easy to record  your voice.
 
Sounds of English Links provides sites with listening activities, authentic materials and sites for pronunciation.

Word stress exercises at http://davidbrett.uniss.it/phonology/ is especially useful for  non-native student teachers.

Larry Ferlazzo recommends the best sites to practice speaking English on his blog. Larry's blog on its own is outstanding for the ones who would like to gain practical ideas since he himself has drilled many of them.

2- Project

We are required to read one of the reports from past Webskills classes before doing our project to 'get the big picture'.  We need to post the following details:
 

• name the author, country and quickly review the teaching context
• summarize what the person did in his/her project, and
• discuss what you liked about the project.

In this respect,  I read the project report prepared by Nadina Nicolici from Romania.

I chose this report because  while quickly scrolling up and down and skimming the sample final projects page, I saw that she conducted the project at a technical high school. I thought we sort of share students from a similar profile.

To be honest, I am so impressed by her amazing study. Each stage in the project is well-designed and she closely monitored her students after she collected detailed information about them to see their individual differences.

She was aware of her constraints. For instance, diversity of students' language level was the most important factor. On the other hand, self-motivated students with computer knowledge was a great help that she focused on.

She set the course goals and to avoid a stereotyped lesson plan, she used her knowledge and created a classroom blog and wiki to interact with them outside the class. Thus, She integrated traditional classroom applications with technology, so she did not have to depend on books, chalk and blakboard only.  She chose the book English Portfolio by Oxford University since she aimed to teach both receptive and productive skills. Accordingly, she carefully picked activities that would be helpful for the students to express themselves with ease in their daily life.

The students' reflections were positive since they were all satisfied in spite of the limited time.

I got the feeling that as a teacher she stated to feel more content and self-confident.

Though I found the study challenging,her study has inspired me.

3- Task: Delicious

We need to create our Delicious account to bookmark our favourite websites and reach them anywhere.Though I have tried to explore a social bookmarking Delicious, I guess I need to sort out more time to make use of it. I also learnt that Diigo is another social bookmarking site that I might have a look at.

Well, it is obviously not as hard as I thought. I have already bookmarked some of my favourite sites. My address is https://delicious.com/hacersivil13. 

As many of us have experienced, I kept writing the web addresses that I found important, but it was never ever practical for me since most of the time while jotting down the addresses I made spelling mistakes, sometimes I lost my notebook or simply notes. Though I tried to add up them to my favourites, it was a big loss when my computer crashed. Luckily, I will not lose those valuable sites at all.