Teaching English as a Foreign Language Online
Posted in Observations on Jul 31st, 2011
Almost every hobby that lets you evolve from a newbie to an expert implies learning hundreds of collocations within the first couple of months of intensive practice, which amounts to thousands if you continue for over a decade. Every time I meet someone who is interested in something I have not been exposed to much [...]
Posted in Commonly Made Mistakes, Learning Language Teaching, Observations, Testing and Assessment on Jun 24th, 2009
a mistake vs an error According to Corder (1967) cited by Ellis (2008), a ‘mistake’ is a deviation in learner language that occurs when learners fail to perform their competence. It is a lapse that reflects processing problems. An error, on the other hand, is a deviation in learner language which results from lack of [...]
Posted in Course Design, Learning Language Teaching, Teacher Skills on Mar 21st, 2009
RIvers & Temperly (A Practical Guide to the Teaching of English, OUP, 1978, p. 47) list 14 purposes or categories of language use establishing and maintaining social relations expressing one’s reactions hiding one’s intentions talking one’s way out of trouble seeking & giving information learning or teaching others to do or make something conversing over [...]
Posted in Course Design, Digital Storytelling, Educational Technology, Instructional Design, language learning e-tivities, Teacher Skills, TEYL, Web Design on Mar 5th, 2009
I have been racking my brains over the past few weeks in vain. I am incapable of thinking of a proper topic myself and that prevents me from starting work on the assignment which reads as follows This assignment consists of two interrelated parts: A multimedia resource for language learning for classroom or self-access use. [...]
Posted in Accents, ESL Facts & Figures, ESL statistics, Learning Language Teaching, Statistics on Feb 3rd, 2009
Source: The Bilingual Family: A Handbook For Parents by Edith Harding & Philip Riley, 1999, CUP. Over half of the world’s population is bilingual. This fact is usually surprising to many Europeans, who are under the impression that living with two or more languages is exceptional. (p. 27) What matters and what doesn’t in second [...]
Posted in groupwork, Learning Language Teaching, Teacher Skills on Feb 2nd, 2009
According to Mckay & Tom (Teaching Adult Second Language Learners, CUP, 1999, p. 26), working in groups helps students feel they are part of a community. They come to know each other as individuals & friends Pair- and groupwork serves an important pedagogical purpose, because it provides more opportunities for individuals to talk than does [...]
Posted in E-Learning Design & Management, Educational Technology, Instructional Design, Observations on Jan 13th, 2009
Social presence is the degree to which an individual feels real or is seen as real while studying in an online context. The higher the degree of the learner’s social presence in a VLE, the lower the probability of the learner not finishing his/her studies.
Posted in Collaborative Learning, Course Design, Digital Storytelling, E-Learning Design & Management, groupwork, Instructional Design, language learning e-tivities, Learning Language Teaching, Observations, Teacher Skills, Using Blogs in EFL, Using Wikis in EFL on Jan 11th, 2009
It looks like more and more language teaching is being done on the web. Let me summarize what online language teachers have on offer, what they do or could do in theory. I will list several examples from Curtis J. Bonk & Ke Zhang’s (2008) Empowering Online Learning, pp. 62-63. Types of resources & activities [...]
Posted in Collaborative Learning, groupwork, language learning e-tivities, Learning Language Teaching, Teacher Skills on Jan 10th, 2009
Heather McKay & Abigail Tom (1999, CUP, Teaching Adult Second Language Learners, pp. 21-22) suggest teachers differentiate among four types of mixed-ability activity. Unless the text is in quotation marks, it is my own interpretation. same input, same task What is different in this situation is the level of your students’ language proficiency. What makes [...]
Posted in Collaborative Learning, E-Learning Design & Management, groupwork, Learning Language Teaching, Observations on Jan 9th, 2009
Does studying 1-to-1 qualify as pairwork? And is it necessarily teacher-centered and bad? Anyone?
