Cooperative or participative learning is something I am experiencing at the Web skills course in plenty. Participants are making helpful comments and lending a helping hand to one another and all this is creating a very conducive learning environment. The participants have explored some of the best sites on LSRW skills and the task on preparing technology enhanced lesson plan has made us apply whatever we have learnt on this course. Robert's wiki is growing richer with online resources and will emerge as a data bank of very good web resources. The way the course is designed and delivered is really making us learn hands-on skills. I only wish I could devote some more time to explore the mind blowing world of www.
Saturday, 27 October 2012
Week 4 : My reflections
Discussion: Reading/writing skill-building
This week we were assigned to explore web resources for teaching reading and writing skills for proficiency level relevant to our teaching contexts.When I explored sites for practicing online reading and writing for my upper intermediate level learners I came across a lot many that attempted to teach these skills either individually or in an integrated manner across various levels of proficiency. However, a great majority of these sites offer comprehension exercises for reading and free writing prompts for developing writing skills and another roadblock is that most of them are paid sites.
A very good site that has been used and recommended by most of my course mates is the one listed by Robert in suggested resources for week 4. It is : http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ It contains 1599 excellent ready to use lesson plans for every level. Authentic news related reading passages are followed by intensive exercises on reading comprehension, vocabulary and usage, speaking,listening and writing. The site uses Lindsay Miller's Pre-, while and post-task format to encourage learners critically think of the task as a piece of genuine communication thereby seeking complete involvement from them.
The other sites i visited and found useful were:
http://www.esl-lounge.com (It had a nice reading/writing exercise to differentiate between informal and formal letters)
http://www.rong-chang.com (contains exercises on vocabulary, reading comprehension and writing skills)
I visited this site at http://www.rong-chang.com/qa2/stories/story062.htm. This page contains a short passage on the nutritional value of vegetables and has exercises on vocabulary, cloze, crossword, Yes/No Questions ,Wh- Questions, comprehension check Questions and, Dictation.
http://www.infosquares.com/readingcomprehension/ (Has many exercises on reading comprehension skills)
http://www.cdlponline.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=stories&topicID=4 (Has many passages on reading/listening comprehension with vocabulary support)
I visited some of the pages on these sites and wrote ABCD style objectives.
Some other sites recommended by the participants:
http://eltv.clubefl (This wonderful site was recommended by Abdelghani and it has many interesting videos followed by multi skill exercises)
(Recommended by Preeti Shukla, has a reading/listening passage on a famous personality which is followed by multi skill exercises for intermediate level learners)
In addition, there were scores of sites which the participants recommended keeping in mind their surrender value to their learners. Robert suggested that good links to reading/writing skills may be posted on his Wiki so that they can serve as a data bank for all.
During the course of discussion two issues were raised i.e. how to teach longer texts such as novels and the effectiveness of e-mail for promoting writing skills. The discussion helped me to look deeply into these issues.
Task: Create a technology-enhanced lesson plan
Like others I found Google Drive and Google Docs very useful tools for storing a lot of data online. Though new to me,I could create a technology enhanced lesson plan for my upper intermediate level learners at the following link:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/137wwaEo44ZdgVAEl0S_n_oDMupo35vD7cVtCELlZdaw/edit
I have found this exercise very exciting and rewarding as a first practical move towards integrating online resources with traditional class room teaching.
Project Task 3: Describe some issues
My learners are not motivated to apply themselves fully in English classes because they have examination-oriented mindset, and unfortunately, exams in my context are so predictable that any student can pass them without attending classes and by memorizing answers to a few well guessed questions!I hope if I draw them towards interesting online resources they will feel motivated to learn to use English for genuine communication, not for passing their exams.It is all about motivating them to discard rote learning and to go for learning English for communicative purposes. My aim for blended teaching is to bring in this holistic change in orientation towards learning English. By using web resources I expect that there will be a positive change in their attitude towards learning English and I would like to measure this change. My possible research topic could be: 'The impact of using web-based resources in classroom on learners' motivation to learn English'. So instead of focusing on a specific micro issue I would like to see the effect of technology integration in learners' attitudes towards learning of English.
My possible broad objectives could be:
a) raise their motivation level by making my instructional inputs interesting by exploiting web resources which contain a lot of audio-visual and illustrative material.
b) encourage them to interact with the online material individually or in pairs and exploit web resources for assigned learning purposes e.g. completing a project or assignment, participating in online discussion, participating in a survey and so on.
c)shift their attention from examination-oriented learning to genuine and authentic language learning by making them use English for real-life communicative situations.
I hope I will be able to achieve these objectives once I am very clear about the available online resources ("What") and the delivery system ("How") of web-based learning. Happily, the web skills course is helping me learn both these tools.
This has been a yet another great week of learning Robert and dear classmates!
Friday, 19 October 2012
Week 3: My reflections
Discussion: Aural/oral
skill-building
The focus of this week's discussion was to explore,discuss and recommend a few websites for teaching and developing the skills of listening and speaking. The focus was on teaching listening and not
"testing" listening. As listening is a passive skill it is mostly
taken for granted and no concerted "teaching" efforts are made to
focus learners' attention on active listening. We were asked to read the following articles to update ourselves:
Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials (Word .doc file)
New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation (right-click on the link to download it)
The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills (right-click on the link to download it)
For teaching listening I have found Lindsay Miller's article at http://www.elthillside.com/up/files/article4.doc very useful as here she proposes a workable framework to teach listening skills
by dividing the listening experience in 3 stages viz. pre-,while- and
post-listening. These activities engage the learners with the task and make
them respond to it more fully. They are not just listening and
(mentally)responding, but actively noticing the processes and strategies which
lead to good comprehension.
And an excellent demonstration of this framework was found in Randall
Davis's http://esl-lab.com/ where he has created a large number of activities
across "easy", "medium" and "difficult" levels to
teach listening skills. The best thing is that the complexity of materials is
tuned to the proficiency levels of learners. I strongly recommend Randall's
ready-to-use resources for every teacher.
For pronunciation, Robert has given us an excellent link https://sites.google.com/site/pronunciationstuff/links which contain a very
comprehensive list of useful links. In particular, I used http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/english/frameset.html where we can not
only listen to the exact pronunciation but simultaneously also see through
video the way internal organs such as tongue, lips, teeth combine to produce
speech sounds. I think this is an excellent tool to teach pronunciation even up
to the intermediate level.
For speaking I visited http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and found the following speaking
activities quite useful for teaching disagreement and retelling stories
respectively. http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1756_how_to_discuss/page4.shtml.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/radio/specials/1210_how_to_converse/page16.shtml. My students could come up with their own related anecdotes/ little stories
using past simple and past continuous tense.
(Please find links at http://www.delicious.com/rajinder26)
For me two best web links which contain a large number of useful links to
listening/speaking sites are:
During discussions with course mates two important issues arose, of teaching speaking to large classes and whether to use authentic materials with beginners. Robert said the large class issue will be taken up in week 6 and regarding authentic materials it was agreed that they could be used at advanced levels, when learners have achieved a fair degree of accuracy in language use.
Task 1: Create a Delicious page
www.delicious.com is an excellent web tool which not only helps
us save our favorite links at one place but also lets us organize them under
appropriate category tags! As teachers we can have a well organized repertoire
of resources which can be easily quickly accessed online for our own or
learners' use from anywhere. We can really develop it as our quick and
efficient reference library.Following
the website above I also created my Delicious link at: http://www.delicious.com/rajinder26/
Task 2. Discussing sample project report
The second task was to read one of the research projects submitted by Web Skills course participants and comment on it. I went through two past research reports : one by Prem Bahadur Phyak
of Nepal whose research focus was teaching online writing skills to
postgraduate students and second by Zlatka Dyankova from Bulgaria in which she
focused on activating her otherwise passive upper intermediate level learners by
introducing them to online learning through WebQuests.
I would like to proceed on similar lines
because like Dyankova, I also deal with passive upper intermediate level
learners who are pursuing a functional English course. Their mind and
imagination towards learning English can be ignited if the usual mundane
classroom teaching and learning is integrated with exciting online learning. I
think to blend online learning with offline classroom learning is though
challenging, can be really very rewarding, and like Zlatka Dyankova, I would
also like to achieve this objective.
Sam and
Egle have already presented an outline summary of her work in their posts and I
would like to add a few things here. First is that she has used the ABCD style to
state the main objective of her project:
After doing research on sports and games using given
materials/C/ the class of upper-intermediate students/A/ should be able to
write a research report of 80-100 words describing a sport/game using passive
voice and linking words/B/ at the accuracy of 80%/D/.
Secondly,
she has chosen to use WebQuests to motivate her learners. A detailed procedure of her
WebQuest was given on the
Process page to make learners
comfortable with technology use. This way classroom-based lesson was
supplemented with most of the information that students explored from the World
Wide Web.
Thirdly,
she had a clearly defined 6 week timeline where learners knew what they were
supposed to do each week. This helped her to pace her teaching inputs with
learners’ learning efforts.
The
obvious gains of this project were, as she herself points out,” Students had the opportunity to express
their ideas, feelings and experiences free of any pressure. They processed the
information and interacted with their classmates. They shared, compared and
commented on each others’ notes, worked individually, in pairs and in small
groups (think -pair - share). They were interested and enthusiastic. As a
whole, the students enjoyed working cooperatively.”
Overall,
she was able to achieve her objective of motivating her learners to use web
resources to complete their classroom tasks.
I think hers was a good attempt at integrating technology with traditional
classroom teaching to induce learners to explore and learn English
communicatively.
To conclude, week 3 has been very rewarding to me and I have started feeling confident in exploration of relevant web tools to optimize learning in my classes.
Thursday, 18 October 2012
SATURDAY, 13 OCTOBER 2012
Week 2 : My reflections
Discussion on search engines
The second week has seen a lot of discussions on exploring non-Google search engines and websites which are useful for ESOL studies. After going through the recommended readings and the links I came to learn about 50 odd search engines and the strategies to refine our searches to get narrow, more useful hits. We can now really see beyond Google and see that 'one size doesn't fit all' and that there are many other alternatives to Google. Participants have shared their personal experiences with various search engines (and many useful websites!) in the class discussion thread to highlight the speed, relevance and accuracy of these engines. At the same time some important issues also came up for discussion regarding child safe search (Saafa ), authenticity of resources at Wikipedia (Diana, Liliana, Robert), search for audio files (Sam) and many other colleagues have given long lists of their recommended websites.
But I feel that the recommended lists are so long that one can easily get lost in the maze. So the guiding principle remains "Choose the search engine that best meets your information needs". All we need to do is to prepare a manageable inventory of search engines and web sites that best meet our major search requirements for our respective learners and for our own academic and general pursuits. Perhaps it can be taken up as a valuable research project where a team can compile a list of such resources along with small descriptive tags.
Writing learning objectives ABCD style
The second task for the week was to write learning objectives written in Pennsylvania State University's ABCD style .I usually engage my learners in such learning tasks as letter writing, report writing, taking long turns in speech, précis writing, role plays and discussions. I think the learning objectives cast in ABCD style can be very useful in determining, as Lohr points out, specific knowledge, skill, or attitude and specifying what method of instruction and criteria for learner achievement are required.
An example of learning objective
Given a topic statement and three bullet points,(A) the learners (B) will be able to develop a letter in about 150 words around the given bullet points (C) with no more than 3 mistakes in coherence, cohesion and grammar.(D)
Robert pointed out that section D could be made more precise by adding a performance criterion like "with at least the score of 8 on 10." I also joined discussion with Sam, Liliana, Colomba and agreed with this. I believe that writing a learning objective in ABCD style is a pretty handy tool for learners and the teacher as it brings much clarity in the teaching and learning operations in a classroom. However, as has been pointed out in the recommended readings, this tool cannot adequately specify those learning behaviors where the learning processes are multiple, complex and more covert as was evident from my discussion with Sam, Liliana, and Colomba.
My Learners' Profile
The third task was to define the class and learners that I teach. The primary objective was to make some preliminary beginnings towards the project that every participant will be taking up individually. My learners are first year students of a three year degree course in humanities. They are boys and girls in the age group of 18-20 years who have studied English in the literary-humanistic, examination-oriented instructional system for about 7-8 years.The target group has joined a Functional English course instead of a literature-based English course because they want to learn practical skills of English so as to communicate effectively in real life situations. They are used to teacher-centered lecture classes and are not experienced in participative learning methods like group or pair work.Typically these students come to a Functional English class with the mindset of examination-oriented learners and the biggest challenge before a teacher is to engage them to learn English language for genuine communication rather than for passing the examinations.
My target learners have some basic knowledge of computers and internet surfing, Facebook and online chatting. However, they communicate in their local language using English letters. I think a teacher can exploit their familiarity with the Net and with some training help them get involved in computer assisted/online learning of English. We have a special computer-assisted language lab in our college where learners can spend time learning English online. I would like it much if I could blend classroom learning with online learning. Perhaps this very idea could be a stepping stone for my project.
Well this week I also visited most of the blogs of my classmates (Diana, Colomba, Liliana) and commented and shared a few things with them. Another learning was to know my scores using Jupitar Grades, i think it is very good idea to "outsource" grade compilation work and it can certainly reduce burden of organisations where large scale testing takes place.
THURSDAY, 4 OCTOBER 2012
Monday, 1 October 2012
Building Teacher Skills through the Interactive Web
Welcome to my blog on "Building Teacher Skills through the Interactive Web"
An e-course scholarship by RELO (Regional English Language Office), US Embassy, New Delhi India has made it possible for me to join a 10 week e-course titled "Building Teacher Skills Through the Interactive Web" being offered by the American English Institute, University of Oregon.
My Experiments with Online Teaching and Learning
The course began with an e mail from the Course Coordinator Robert Elliot asking the participants to visit and explore the course website (https://sites.google.com/site/webskillsuo/ to understand the course contents and the course delivery system. To me the course seemed to be pretty hands on and pragmatically designed for it included the basic pedagogic considerations like Presentation - Practice - Reflection. I hope my participation in the course will not only update my knowledge and improve my skills as an online teacher but it will also help me understand various people and cultures from across the world.
Week 1
Robert assigned the participants the following topics to work through in the first week:
- Introduction to the course
- Setting ground rules for discussions
- Doing a needs analysis related to teaching and technology
- Looking at rubrics for self-evaluating discussion board posts
- Discussion: Self-introductions; ground rules for discussions; rubrics for posting
A virtual classroom was set up for the participants where they could log in using a website link http://www.nicenet.org/. Day 1 in this virtual classroom was very interesting where I introduced myself to other participants and got to read their introductions. I must say that these introductions were quite friendly and warm and Robert's crisp and encouraging comments created a warm and friendly learning environment for all participants. My course mates had wide range experience in teaching English from primary to University levels. In spite of their diverse backgrounds and they all seemed excited to explore web resources for effective teaching of English.
On this day I also set up the present blog visiting www.bloggers.com and responded to the Needs analysis survey on http://tinyurl.com/webskillsAfall2012.
Creating a new Blog
Creating a blog is very easy. You visit the website www.bloggers.com and click on the template 'create a new blog'. Just see the demonstration at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSs3XXSCuoE or follow the simple instructions posted by Robert and you will be excitedly writing your first post on your blog.
To know more about writing blogs for ELT I found the article in link http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/blogging-elt "Blogging for ELT" very useful where she talks about three kinds of blogs for Teacher, Class and Learners for teaching English online.
I also found the examples of writing reflective blogs in link http://deborah-teachingonline.blogspot.com/ very useful.
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