Dear blog and bloggers,
Week 3.O has been exceptionally hectic compared to the two previous versions. We were assigned some very interesting articles to read and discuss. The theme was how technology could help teachers improve their students’ aural/oral skills. The articles provided insights into the various uses of technology to enhance both teaching and learning. The first one was particularly interseting in that Lindsay Miller invited us to reconsider the benefits radio and TV could bring in to our language classes. She stressed more the fact that this kind of technology is capable of providing teachers with real and authentic materials they can use to develop students’ listening skills. Such materials would not only ‘create good listeners’, but ‘offer’ learners ’a richer learning experience’ as well. Pronunciation was the major concern of the second artice written by Maria Grazia Busà . She mainly talked about the technology advacements both is its soft and hardware forms and how helpful they proved in improving learners’ pronunciation. The third article by Julia Gong drew our attention to the considerable impact of CALL on developping students’ speaking skills. She, of course, equally mentioned some disadvantages of the employment of CALL, but they were insignificant compared to its countless virtues. All in all, the articles were a good and illuminating read for me and anyone interested in adding an ICT flavour to their teaching practices.
Exploring a set of recommended skill-building sites was an enjoyable assignment to do this week. The exploration led me to some unexpected great discoveries in the kingdom of ELT in in the immense galaxy of the web. From my coursemates’ insightful posts I can say there was a unanimous agreement on the exceptional quality of Larry Ferlazzo’s blog and websites. An extremely invaluable jewel for ELT/ESL practitioners is the collection of Web 2.0 tools and websites he selflessly offers Internet users. What is more, he provides a concise summary what each site or tool is about. Bookmarking as well as recommending the man’s website was but a natural and immediate reflex from, perhaps, all coursemates. There were also other equally interesting sites on the menu, but Larry’s was an unrivalled star ! The ensuing discussions and reactions posted by my colleagues were an obvious indicator that we’ve already bought a one-way ticket to ICT land ! No return ! In fact, I learnt a great deal from all coursemates’ posts.
Social bookmarking was part of this week assignment. We were assigned the task of creating an account in de.li.ci.ous. Delicious was ,in no way, a misnomer. The task was delicious through and through. Now, I no longer fear the loss of my bookmarks in case of computer crashes. Also, accessing my bookmarks is no more PC-bound. Thanks to ‘delicious’, I’m capable of sharing and reaching my favorite sites and those bookmarked by my network despite being away from home and my laptop.
Folks, I’m learning a lot rom you and I do feel I’m being upgraded into a ‘Teacher 2.0’. What about you?
Yours.
Arbi
Below are links to the articles and sites mentioned in my post.
Teaching aural/oral skills - read at least two of the three articles here
Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials (Word .doc file)
http://www.elthillside.com/up/files/article4.doc
New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation (right-click on the link to download it)
http://www.openstarts.units.it/dspace/bitstream/10077/2850/1/bus%C3%A0.pdf
The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills (right-click on the link to download it)
www.edfac.unimelb.edu.au/research/resources/student_res/postscriptfiles/vol3/vol3_1_gong1.pdf
Speaking lesson plans (teacher resource)
Speaking lesson plans at One Stop English
Conversation lesson plans at esl.about.com
Communicative lesson plans at ESL-galaxy.com
Websites to explore
Listening (student resource)
Randall's Cyber Listening Lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/
This is one of the few websites that includes pre-, during, and post- activities. It's organized by topic and level.
Listening RealEnglish video - advanced; multiple dialects
http://www.real-english.com/reo/1/unit1.html
Pronunciation
Pronunciation links (student and teacher resources)
http://www.uoregon.edu/~dhealey/138/pronlinks.html
Pronunciation Tips from the BBC - exercises, videos, quizzes
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/
Speaking
Best Sites to Practice Speaking English (Larry Ferlazzo) - high use of tech
http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/03/17/the-best-sites-to-practice-speaking-english/
Additional Resources:
· English, Baby! - audio, video, and chat for English language learners
http://www.englishbaby.com
· NPR podcasts - advanced; many different topics, and most have transcripts
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php
· Pronunciation Thought groups (video)
http://nadeen-grammar.blogspot.com/2009/04/thought-groups-part-1.html
· The Pedagogy-Technology Interface in Computer-Assisted Language Learning (academic article)
http://lands.let.kun.nl/literature/neri.2002.3.pdf
Dear Arbi,
ReplyDeleteI like your style full of allegories and would like to thank you for this interesting post. I share your feeling about us being upgraded. Moreover, I am starting to feel fear to be lost in such amount of useful sites. I think, I should already begin sharing some portions of information with my colleagues in this country in order to have a feedback and not forget anything useful.
Yours,
Victoria
Hi Victoria / study freak ;-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by and leaving a comment. The fear of of getting lost in the incomparable information bounty the web incessantly bombards us with is quite legitimate. But a course like this one is supposed to help us process and establish a kind of order in this chaos of information called the Net. Delicious, other web 2.0 tools and the specialized websites we were told to explore are undoubtedly a good means to attain such goal. As to sharing, allow me to reiterate what I've already said about it in a previous post. Sharing is at the heart of of web-ethics and true netizenship. And through you, I would like to salute all the Russians that are doing a great job to democratize access to information through a number of wonderful sites. 'Avaxhome' and 'englishtips.org' are two great examples where one can download all sorts of software, movies and books related to the leaning and teaching of English. I highly recommend the two sites but more particularly the second one (englishtips.org).
Happy learning
Regards
Arbi