Chapter 7 (Planning Tips) of Warschauer et al.suggests a list of teacher tips for their coordinating of online projects. These tips are helpful for both one-class projects and multi-class projects. The access to computer and the Internet provide means of communication for the group members and the teachers as well. E-mail accounts and web-based groups can be established for communication. In the one-class projects, given that the IT resources available are limited, students can still do the projects by spending more time on off-line preparation. As for multi-class projects, teachers can establish teaching teams, and find partners with similar approaches, and help students with the online communication.
Although these tips are proved to be beneficial by some studies, it may cause problems if put in another context. One of the main problems with the communication is that the students may not have sufficient time for their individual communication. Most ESL/EFL students in Hong Kong or in the Mainland are occupied with other in-class activities and homework, and thus may not be able to do the project at home. In this regard, I believe that it could be a solution to have the students discuss over the project on a separate session. Project groups are formed and tasks are assigned to each group member. After the session, these students can work independently on information collection and website designing.
Another problem may occur when the students encounter difficulties in the correct use of English language. The challenge for the students would be the difficulties to express themselves clearly and correctly in English. Thus, the projects they prepare would turn out to be either the copying of readily available articles online, or their own writing with a lot of errors. This will impede the whole project as teachers have to deal with grammatical errors in the first place. Therefore, I suggest that the challenging project can be replaced with the less difficult online discussion over a certain easy topics. The students post their threads on a forum, for example, will provide the learners a chance for exchanging ideas and learn language. The teacher’s role in this activity will be the coordinating and facilitating of communication.
Link to Warschauer(2003) Chapter 7
http://web.archive.org/web/20080304005803/exchanges.state.gov/education/engteaching/ifettips.htm
Saturday 23 January 2010
Saturday 16 January 2010
Learning English pronunciation with a video clip
I’d like to introduce my experience of learning English pronunciation with a downloaded video clip of academic presentation training. The instructions on making academic presentation is presented by Ms Rosemary, senior tutor with the University of Portsmouth. I chose the video clip because the presenter speaks clear and good English. In her speech, there are identifiable patterns of rhythm and intonation contour. Following is the elaboration of how I made use of this video clip to learn English pronunciation.
I transcribed Ms. Rosemary’s speech and printed it out. By rewinding and listening to her speech thoroughly, I identified the rhythmic features of her speech and marked them out on the transcript. For example, the weak forms are regularly realised on function words and words of given information. The syllables are stressed in the words that are emphasised. Together with the stress shifts, intonation contour is also presented on the weak and strong syllables. The stressed, end-of-tone-unit syllables within an utterance usually have a rising or even tone, while the unstressed words at the end of an utterance are often realised in a falling tone. These features are so distinctive that I found my imitation noticeably closer to a British accent in terms of intonation when I imitated them.
Apart from these prosodic features I have identified in the video clip, Ms Rosemary’s speech also has the feature that most of the plosive and fricative consonantal sounds within, or at the end of, the words are realised. This feature is so noticeable that I pick it up in my imitation in my formal, prepared speech with much ease.
Above all, I believe that the most important point of learning English pronunciation from online resources on a computer is that we carefully digest the materials, extract from them the rules and the nature, and do much practice on the features identified. It is more valuable to analyse and practice with a small number of good materials than viewing a large amount of websites, roughly.
I transcribed Ms. Rosemary’s speech and printed it out. By rewinding and listening to her speech thoroughly, I identified the rhythmic features of her speech and marked them out on the transcript. For example, the weak forms are regularly realised on function words and words of given information. The syllables are stressed in the words that are emphasised. Together with the stress shifts, intonation contour is also presented on the weak and strong syllables. The stressed, end-of-tone-unit syllables within an utterance usually have a rising or even tone, while the unstressed words at the end of an utterance are often realised in a falling tone. These features are so distinctive that I found my imitation noticeably closer to a British accent in terms of intonation when I imitated them.
Apart from these prosodic features I have identified in the video clip, Ms Rosemary’s speech also has the feature that most of the plosive and fricative consonantal sounds within, or at the end of, the words are realised. This feature is so noticeable that I pick it up in my imitation in my formal, prepared speech with much ease.
Above all, I believe that the most important point of learning English pronunciation from online resources on a computer is that we carefully digest the materials, extract from them the rules and the nature, and do much practice on the features identified. It is more valuable to analyse and practice with a small number of good materials than viewing a large amount of websites, roughly.
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Learning English online is fun
Hi, everyone,
Welcome to visit my blog. Learning English through the Internet is of great fun and shed lights on a new way of TESOL, because the enormous amount of online resources bring us to an interesting world. They can always brush up our English and enlighten our mind. To begin your first tour of online learning with Robbie, please try an interesting online game at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/mihigh/games
I will normally give you some fifteen minutes to have a try on playing the game. Let's work together in understanding the tasks.
Welcome to visit my blog. Learning English through the Internet is of great fun and shed lights on a new way of TESOL, because the enormous amount of online resources bring us to an interesting world. They can always brush up our English and enlighten our mind. To begin your first tour of online learning with Robbie, please try an interesting online game at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/mihigh/games
I will normally give you some fifteen minutes to have a try on playing the game. Let's work together in understanding the tasks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
