CALL E-Portfolio on LiveBinders
Click here to go to my portfolio
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
iTalki Review
italki was reviewed by Turkan, Quanya and Randy.
italki is a language learning social network site. One of the distinguishing features of this site is how it links professional teachers or informal tutors with learners of a particular language. Professional teachers are expected to conduct courses similar to classroom-based language classes and are paid for their service. The method of payment is through the italki credits. It is worth pointing out that iTalki takes 15% commission on the money earned by teachers. The classes are offered online through Skype and must be arranged to fit to the instructor's schedule. Informal tutors are "near-native speakers" in the target language. Both of these teaching roles require an online application.
There is also a language partners section of the site where you can link up with speakers of the language and practice the language. You can view the participants levels in the language, which helps you make decisions about your choice in language partner. Once your are language partners, then you follow one another to respond to messages.
In addition to Skype, site participants also interact through the "notebook," "answers," and "discussions" tabs where you can read posts by users from a specific language group. This way you can see the types of questions and comments that have been posted by users. This seems to be the asynchronous section of the site.
In general there seems to be a lack of professional teachers featured on the site. We looked at Turkish teachers and found only one professional teacher. What is nice about the message boards is that it seems users are fairly responsive in making corrections to postings in a timely manner.
italki was reviewed by Turkan, Quanya and Randy.
italki is a language learning social network site. One of the distinguishing features of this site is how it links professional teachers or informal tutors with learners of a particular language. Professional teachers are expected to conduct courses similar to classroom-based language classes and are paid for their service. The method of payment is through the italki credits. It is worth pointing out that iTalki takes 15% commission on the money earned by teachers. The classes are offered online through Skype and must be arranged to fit to the instructor's schedule. Informal tutors are "near-native speakers" in the target language. Both of these teaching roles require an online application.
There is also a language partners section of the site where you can link up with speakers of the language and practice the language. You can view the participants levels in the language, which helps you make decisions about your choice in language partner. Once your are language partners, then you follow one another to respond to messages.
In addition to Skype, site participants also interact through the "notebook," "answers," and "discussions" tabs where you can read posts by users from a specific language group. This way you can see the types of questions and comments that have been posted by users. This seems to be the asynchronous section of the site.
In general there seems to be a lack of professional teachers featured on the site. We looked at Turkish teachers and found only one professional teacher. What is nice about the message boards is that it seems users are fairly responsive in making corrections to postings in a timely manner.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Week 13
Computer-Based Language Testing
This week, we have discussed how computers are used for language testing. We know that technology nowadays makes many things a lot easier. I think it also works for testing. There are definitely great advantages that computers provide for testing and assessment. We have discussed its benefits over traditional methods of testing and it seems like there are many of them which encourages institutions and high-stakes testing services to incorporate computer-based testing. It is definitely a lot more practical to conduct a test through the use of computers. It is easier to collect the data. It can also provide advantages for listening and speaking skills in terms of practicality since you do not have to hire people to do interviews with students one-one-one. For these reasons, it will be time and money saving for institutions.
However, there are still some problems with computer-based language testing. These are usually related to technical problems while taking the test. The computers might not work, there may be internet-related problems which will prevent students to take the test or maybe affect their motivation causing anxiety. Another problem is about the computer using skills of the test-takers. Nowadays, although computers are common and majority of the students are familiar with using them. There could be still some test-takers who do not have enough experience using computers. Or we talked about the keyboards in our class discussion and how even different keyboards can possibly create problems for test-takers.
Still, other than these technical problems, I find computer-based language testing effective in many situations and they seem to dominate all different types of testing.
Computer-Based Language Testing
This week, we have discussed how computers are used for language testing. We know that technology nowadays makes many things a lot easier. I think it also works for testing. There are definitely great advantages that computers provide for testing and assessment. We have discussed its benefits over traditional methods of testing and it seems like there are many of them which encourages institutions and high-stakes testing services to incorporate computer-based testing. It is definitely a lot more practical to conduct a test through the use of computers. It is easier to collect the data. It can also provide advantages for listening and speaking skills in terms of practicality since you do not have to hire people to do interviews with students one-one-one. For these reasons, it will be time and money saving for institutions.
However, there are still some problems with computer-based language testing. These are usually related to technical problems while taking the test. The computers might not work, there may be internet-related problems which will prevent students to take the test or maybe affect their motivation causing anxiety. Another problem is about the computer using skills of the test-takers. Nowadays, although computers are common and majority of the students are familiar with using them. There could be still some test-takers who do not have enough experience using computers. Or we talked about the keyboards in our class discussion and how even different keyboards can possibly create problems for test-takers.
Still, other than these technical problems, I find computer-based language testing effective in many situations and they seem to dominate all different types of testing.
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Non-essentialist Culture Teaching Activity
Dueling American Perspectives
Purpose: students will understand and compare contemporary American political views. This is important for student understanding of variety in the target culture.
Level: Advanced reading/writing class
Procedure:
1. Select some current event articles from a neutral source (e.g. Reuters)
2. Assign pairs an article and have them find the same story on FoxNews and MSNBC.
3. Ss should be directed to look at differences in how each source portrays the same story (word choice, etc) as well as the content found in the comment sections.
4. Ss will write a short comparison essay or blog post highlighting the different perspectives in the articles and different values they notice in the comments.
1. Select some current event articles from a neutral source (e.g. Reuters)
2. Assign pairs an article and have them find the same story on FoxNews and MSNBC.
3. Ss should be directed to look at differences in how each source portrays the same story (word choice, etc) as well as the content found in the comment sections.
4. Ss will write a short comparison essay or blog post highlighting the different perspectives in the articles and different values they notice in the comments.
-By Turkan and Dan.
Monday, April 15, 2013
Week 12
Teaching Culture through CALL
Language teaching usually goes hand-in-hand with the teaching of culture and in fact learning the target culture can help the improvement of the target language proficiency. With the readings and the discussions about teaching culture through CALL, I once realized how difficult it might be to teach culture and I also realized that through computers and internet, it has become easier to have access to different culture which makes the teaching process easier.
Today, students can find many different types of websites with authentic information and these websites provide lots of cultural elements in them. With so much information available on the internet, teachers can find ways to integrate them into the classroom. For instance, assigning students tasks to be completed using the information online, scavenger hunts, activities to analyze some cultural values and behaviors could be some of them.
Also, I think virtual worlds are great platforms to learn culture. Having access to native speakers of the target language and the target culture is quite easy today with many virtual worlds available. These can be used in and out of class and can be assigned as homework. In addition, I believe there are great sources for motivating the students.
Teaching Culture through CALL
Language teaching usually goes hand-in-hand with the teaching of culture and in fact learning the target culture can help the improvement of the target language proficiency. With the readings and the discussions about teaching culture through CALL, I once realized how difficult it might be to teach culture and I also realized that through computers and internet, it has become easier to have access to different culture which makes the teaching process easier.
Today, students can find many different types of websites with authentic information and these websites provide lots of cultural elements in them. With so much information available on the internet, teachers can find ways to integrate them into the classroom. For instance, assigning students tasks to be completed using the information online, scavenger hunts, activities to analyze some cultural values and behaviors could be some of them.
Also, I think virtual worlds are great platforms to learn culture. Having access to native speakers of the target language and the target culture is quite easy today with many virtual worlds available. These can be used in and out of class and can be assigned as homework. In addition, I believe there are great sources for motivating the students.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Week 11
Writing and Grammar
With last week's readings and discussions, I realized that online tools have so much to offer especially for writing and grammar. They make the teaching and even assessment process easier and more effective.
For instance, using simple tools such as Wordle can be a great way to show the students their word choice in a piece of writing. This visualization can help the students to notice which words they use frequently and whether they need to replace some of these words with others. It can also be a good way to start a writing prompt. Students can be given a word cloud and students can create their own story based ont he words in the word cloud.
In addition, there are many writing tools available. Sites such as turnitin or writecheck helps writers to learn about citations. With writecheck, students can also get help on their grammar, punctuation and organization. Blogs and discussion boards can be other ways to provide feedback to students' writing. Video feedback or screencasting are some others and these have been proved to be effective in several studies. One of the tools I always use to give feedback is the review feature of Microsoft Word. It is simple, easy to use and it is always available once you save it.
I believe that especially for writing and grammar, computers and online tools should be incorporated into classes since they have so much to offer and since they can improve the students better in many ways compared to traditional activities.
Writing and Grammar
With last week's readings and discussions, I realized that online tools have so much to offer especially for writing and grammar. They make the teaching and even assessment process easier and more effective.
For instance, using simple tools such as Wordle can be a great way to show the students their word choice in a piece of writing. This visualization can help the students to notice which words they use frequently and whether they need to replace some of these words with others. It can also be a good way to start a writing prompt. Students can be given a word cloud and students can create their own story based ont he words in the word cloud.
In addition, there are many writing tools available. Sites such as turnitin or writecheck helps writers to learn about citations. With writecheck, students can also get help on their grammar, punctuation and organization. Blogs and discussion boards can be other ways to provide feedback to students' writing. Video feedback or screencasting are some others and these have been proved to be effective in several studies. One of the tools I always use to give feedback is the review feature of Microsoft Word. It is simple, easy to use and it is always available once you save it.
I believe that especially for writing and grammar, computers and online tools should be incorporated into classes since they have so much to offer and since they can improve the students better in many ways compared to traditional activities.
Materials Development II
Here are the documents for my second materials development:
Click here to go to the lesson plan
Links to technological tools are incorporated into the lesson plan.
Click here to go to the overview of the materials explaining the rationale behind them
Here are the documents for my second materials development:
Click here to go to the lesson plan
Links to technological tools are incorporated into the lesson plan.
Click here to go to the overview of the materials explaining the rationale behind them
Monday, April 1, 2013
Week 10
Listening & Speaking
Listening and Speaking are probably the easiest skills to incorporate technology. There are so many online tools available to be used for spoken communication i.e. video conferencing via Skype. These tools can be used to increase motivation or to provide an opportunity for interaction among the learners.
In addition, use of podcasts are quite popular and I believe helpful. I especially liked the idea of using them for vocabulary learning and teaching. They are very practical and learners can listen to these podcasts on-the-go.
There are also many applications available for smart phones and tablets. These can increase learner autonomy and teachers can also use these apps in the class to provide activities for students. Here, it is important to carefully analyze several apps before choosing which one to use since there are so many available on the internet.
Listening & Speaking
Listening and Speaking are probably the easiest skills to incorporate technology. There are so many online tools available to be used for spoken communication i.e. video conferencing via Skype. These tools can be used to increase motivation or to provide an opportunity for interaction among the learners.
In addition, use of podcasts are quite popular and I believe helpful. I especially liked the idea of using them for vocabulary learning and teaching. They are very practical and learners can listen to these podcasts on-the-go.
There are also many applications available for smart phones and tablets. These can increase learner autonomy and teachers can also use these apps in the class to provide activities for students. Here, it is important to carefully analyze several apps before choosing which one to use since there are so many available on the internet.
Saturday, March 2, 2013
Week 7
Synchronous CMC
Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication can be helpful in language teaching in various ways. They encourage learners to participate in the lesson and they have been shown to decrease the use of L1 (Warschauer, 1996).
There are many different tools to incorporate for SCMC such as chat rooms that can be accessed through a website, various chat programs like Instant Messenger and video conferencing like Skype. When using these tools, I believe it is important to have clear and meaningful tasks. Students should have certain objectives to achieve once they start the activity. Simply asking them to 'chat' may not be as effective as more structured activities.
Creating some tasks to be completed individually or in pairs/groups can be some of the ways to incorporate CMC to language teaching. Students can work and collaborate on a document. Or, they can be assigned some tasks to complete after the CMC session.
Google Hangout is an effective CMC tool (Click here to go to Google Hangout) that provides a variety of features. You can invite your friends to 'hangout' with you or you can hangout with strangers. You can simply type or have a video chat. The great thing is up to 9 people can have video chat at the same time which is usually a paid service in many other CMC tools.
There are so many possibilities of how you can adapt CMC tools into teaching. Exploring the options available and collaborating with other teachers can be a good start.
Synchronous CMC
There are many different tools to incorporate for SCMC such as chat rooms that can be accessed through a website, various chat programs like Instant Messenger and video conferencing like Skype. When using these tools, I believe it is important to have clear and meaningful tasks. Students should have certain objectives to achieve once they start the activity. Simply asking them to 'chat' may not be as effective as more structured activities.
Creating some tasks to be completed individually or in pairs/groups can be some of the ways to incorporate CMC to language teaching. Students can work and collaborate on a document. Or, they can be assigned some tasks to complete after the CMC session.
Google Hangout is an effective CMC tool (Click here to go to Google Hangout) that provides a variety of features. You can invite your friends to 'hangout' with you or you can hangout with strangers. You can simply type or have a video chat. The great thing is up to 9 people can have video chat at the same time which is usually a paid service in many other CMC tools.
There are so many possibilities of how you can adapt CMC tools into teaching. Exploring the options available and collaborating with other teachers can be a good start.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Materials Development I
Here are the documents for my first materials development:
Click here to go to the Lesson Plan
Links to technological tools are incorporated into the lesson plan.
Click here to go to the overview of the materials explaining the rationale behind them
Here are the documents for my first materials development:
Click here to go to the Lesson Plan
Links to technological tools are incorporated into the lesson plan.
Click here to go to the overview of the materials explaining the rationale behind them
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Week 6
Teaching with Corpora
Corpus is a principled collection of texts which is accessible via computer. There are several different corpuses available for use and this vast amount of data can help classroom teaching.
First, it is important to understand how corpuses are constructed and why they would be useful for teaching. Reppen (2010) Ch.1. provides information on this by stating the importance of meaningful contexts and activities for language teaching. Using corpus in order to decide what to teach will also enable teachers focus on what the students will encounter the most in the target domain.
The chapter goes on providing some ideas to use a corpus with language learners. Flowerdew (2009) also provides some activities. One of the activities can be developed by using word lists and concordance lines. Word lists will help understand how frequent certain words occur and concordance lines will show the context that the word is used in. Students can identify the parts of speech, suffixes, word forms and spot the words that they do not know. They can check what other words go together with a certain word and they can even learn the different registers and the pragmatic uses of that word, whether it is more common in spoken or written language.
Although there are not many language teaching books based on corpus, corpus linguistics is growing rapidly. It seems to provide many benefits for language teaching; yet, there is definitely need for more studies and activities to be developed. This way, there will be more sources available for teachers that are used and proven to be useful in classroom.
Teaching with Corpora
First, it is important to understand how corpuses are constructed and why they would be useful for teaching. Reppen (2010) Ch.1. provides information on this by stating the importance of meaningful contexts and activities for language teaching. Using corpus in order to decide what to teach will also enable teachers focus on what the students will encounter the most in the target domain.
The chapter goes on providing some ideas to use a corpus with language learners. Flowerdew (2009) also provides some activities. One of the activities can be developed by using word lists and concordance lines. Word lists will help understand how frequent certain words occur and concordance lines will show the context that the word is used in. Students can identify the parts of speech, suffixes, word forms and spot the words that they do not know. They can check what other words go together with a certain word and they can even learn the different registers and the pragmatic uses of that word, whether it is more common in spoken or written language.
Although there are not many language teaching books based on corpus, corpus linguistics is growing rapidly. It seems to provide many benefits for language teaching; yet, there is definitely need for more studies and activities to be developed. This way, there will be more sources available for teachers that are used and proven to be useful in classroom.
Monday, February 11, 2013
Week 5
Designing CALL Activities
This week, we talked about designing activities and two of the online tools we used were Grockit Answers and Socrative. These tools are good to create various activities. I have tried them both and found them to be useful tools.
With Grockit Answers, it is possible to make listening activities with comprehension or discussion questions. As students are watching a video, they answer the questions based on the video and can see other students' answers. These videos can be authentic and the teacher can choose any topic related to the subject of the lesson. Or teachers/students can make their own video and upload it on Youtube and comment on each others.
Another tool I tried was Socrative. It has a variety of activities to choose from and Space Race is definitely my favorite. IT is a good way to motivate the students, it will encourage them to participate and to try harder to win the race. It is also good for having pair or group work which will require the learners to negotiate meaning and interact with each other.Overall, this week, I have used these two different tools to create activities and found them to be very user-friendly and time-saving. I also liked how they encourage interaction among learners.
I have created an activity using Grockit Answers and the description and the link for this activity can be found on my blog.
Designing CALL Activities
This week, we talked about designing activities and two of the online tools we used were Grockit Answers and Socrative. These tools are good to create various activities. I have tried them both and found them to be useful tools.
With Grockit Answers, it is possible to make listening activities with comprehension or discussion questions. As students are watching a video, they answer the questions based on the video and can see other students' answers. These videos can be authentic and the teacher can choose any topic related to the subject of the lesson. Or teachers/students can make their own video and upload it on Youtube and comment on each others.
Another tool I tried was Socrative. It has a variety of activities to choose from and Space Race is definitely my favorite. IT is a good way to motivate the students, it will encourage them to participate and to try harder to win the race. It is also good for having pair or group work which will require the learners to negotiate meaning and interact with each other.Overall, this week, I have used these two different tools to create activities and found them to be very user-friendly and time-saving. I also liked how they encourage interaction among learners.
I have created an activity using Grockit Answers and the description and the link for this activity can be found on my blog.
Grockit Answers Activity
For this activity, I created a short video with four questions.
Students will watch and listen to the video and answer the questions as they do so.
This activity is good for practicing listening skills since it has comprehension questions. Also, the open-ended question at the end of the video requires an opinion based answer which can be discussed among other students.
I have tried this with one of my friends who is a non-native speaker and she found it interesting and she said she would love to see others' responses to the questions which actually makes this activity more fun and interactive.
Click here to go the activity on Grockit
For this activity, I created a short video with four questions.
Students will watch and listen to the video and answer the questions as they do so.
This activity is good for practicing listening skills since it has comprehension questions. Also, the open-ended question at the end of the video requires an opinion based answer which can be discussed among other students.
I have tried this with one of my friends who is a non-native speaker and she found it interesting and she said she would love to see others' responses to the questions which actually makes this activity more fun and interactive.
Click here to go the activity on Grockit
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Week 4
SLA and CALL
This week was especially helpful to realize my own teaching philosophy and what role technology plays in it.
Although I believe that technology has great things to offer, I always think whether using it will help my lesson objectives or not. It is important to consider the objectives and plan accordingly. If it is not making learning process more effective or easier, then what is the point of using it? So, as teachers, we should be careful when deciding to use an online tool. They can be time-consuming or time-saving and we want to think about both advantages and disadvantages of it and then determine if it is worth using that tool.
Yet, there are times I use technology just for the sake of motivating my students. I think, if used properly, online tools can be a good source of motivation and we know that motivation is key to language learning. Thus, again depending on the purpose and the needs of the learners, these tools can function differently and might be helpful.
Overall, my teaching philosophy with technology aims to enhance learning either through motivating my students or through creating more effective tasks for the learning process.
SLA and CALL
This week was especially helpful to realize my own teaching philosophy and what role technology plays in it.
Although I believe that technology has great things to offer, I always think whether using it will help my lesson objectives or not. It is important to consider the objectives and plan accordingly. If it is not making learning process more effective or easier, then what is the point of using it? So, as teachers, we should be careful when deciding to use an online tool. They can be time-consuming or time-saving and we want to think about both advantages and disadvantages of it and then determine if it is worth using that tool.
Yet, there are times I use technology just for the sake of motivating my students. I think, if used properly, online tools can be a good source of motivation and we know that motivation is key to language learning. Thus, again depending on the purpose and the needs of the learners, these tools can function differently and might be helpful.
Overall, my teaching philosophy with technology aims to enhance learning either through motivating my students or through creating more effective tasks for the learning process.
Digital Storytelling In-class Group Activity
We were assigned to use capzles.com which is a social digital storytelling website.
We developed a short story with pictures and sound.
Click here to go to our group's story on capzles
Unfortunately, we found this website really difficult to use. We were not able to arrange the pictures or make a slideshow using this online tool. After spending quite a while trying to figure out how capzles exactly works, we were not able to create what we wanted which was a disappointment. There is probably more to discover on capzles (I hope), but with my experience so far with it, I don't see the point of using it to create a 'story'.
We were assigned to use capzles.com which is a social digital storytelling website.
We developed a short story with pictures and sound.
Click here to go to our group's story on capzles
Unfortunately, we found this website really difficult to use. We were not able to arrange the pictures or make a slideshow using this online tool. After spending quite a while trying to figure out how capzles exactly works, we were not able to create what we wanted which was a disappointment. There is probably more to discover on capzles (I hope), but with my experience so far with it, I don't see the point of using it to create a 'story'.
Monday, February 4, 2013
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Week 3
Web Resources for Language Teaching
Web Resources for Language Teaching
This week, we talked about various tools to be used for language teaching.
I will talk about some of the tools we discussed in my post for this week.
Hot potatoes is a very popular tool that many teachers use and it can be easily applied to language classes.
I heard of it many times but it was actually my first time trying hot potatoes. I think it is quite easy to use and you can create activities in a very short amount of time. You do not have to worry about using a word document and spending time with the format of your activity. Hot potatoes does it for you which is very convenient for teachers. In addition, it includes several basic types of activities which are common in language classes. Thus, many teachers would be able to create effective activities since they are already familiar with these types.
Digital storytelling is another good way to help students' learning process. Especially for listening and speaking skills, storytelling has a lot to offer. Now with the advanced technology, it is possible to create digital stories which are stored online. I think there are many great advantages of online storytelling tools. You can create a story in a short amount of time. Teachers/students can record their voices and listen to others' stories. You can personalize the stories, choose whichever topic you want and share them with anyone you want. While it can be easily incorporated into speaking skills, it can also be used for writing skills or certain grammatical features. I have tried some of these digital storytelling tools such as capzles, storybird and voicethread and they all offer different features. So, depending on the purpose and the structure of the activity, it is possible to choose and use one of these online tools.
Overall, while there are great online tools, it is important to note that they should be 'tools' not the main purpose of the class. So while integrating these activities. teachers should definitely think about their learning objectives.
Digital Storytelling Assignment
I have created a storytelling activity using a series of pictures on VoiceThread.
Students will listen to the instructions, look at the picture and tell the story.
There are two characters in the story, Jenny and John. And in the end, students will respond to the question 'What should Jenny do?'
This activity is designed for adult learners since the topic, domestic violence, would not be appropriate for younger learners.
Everyone records their responses and shares their opinions.
Click here to go to the activity on VoiceThread
I have created a storytelling activity using a series of pictures on VoiceThread.
Students will listen to the instructions, look at the picture and tell the story.
There are two characters in the story, Jenny and John. And in the end, students will respond to the question 'What should Jenny do?'
This activity is designed for adult learners since the topic, domestic violence, would not be appropriate for younger learners.
Everyone records their responses and shares their opinions.
Click here to go to the activity on VoiceThread
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