Teaching English as a Foreign Language Online
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 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 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, Course Design, E-Learning Design & Management, Educational Technology, groupwork, Instructional Design, interactive CD-ROMs, Learner Skills, Learning Language Teaching, Teacher Skills on Jan 6th, 2009
Ian Forsyth (Teaching & Learning Materials & The Internet, 3rd edition, p. 135) defines interactivity as emulating the traditional classroom He lists the 5 Ts that cause interactivity to fail on the Internet (pp. 19 -23) time technology timid territoriality on topics training truss – an infrastructure requirement
Posted in Course Design, E-Learning Design & Management, Educational Technology, Instructional Design, Observations, Teacher Skills on Jan 5th, 2009
Let me list some of the topical issues that keep emerging and need to be addressed asap. usability – what I mean here is all the extra clicks that either my students or I make, which takes time. Distributing courseware in space often results in learners’ having to spend more time online than they would [...]
Posted in Instructional Design, language learning e-tivities, Learning Language Teaching, Observations, Statistics, Teacher Skills on Jan 1st, 2009
To begin with, I am not aware of any reliable statistics. I can only draw on my personal experience and summarize a number of related Google search results. It is obvious, I hope, that it is impossible to spend more than 3 clock hours talking without a break. I guess that’s the maximum. As for [...]
Posted in Course Design, Instructional Design, language learning e-tivities, Learner Skills, Observations, Teacher Skills, Using Blogs in EFL, Using Wikis in EFL on Dec 31st, 2008
‘Spent the day contemplating Clarke’s e-note-taking advice. Isn’t it amazing? They’ve got it all online but for proper note-taking tools. I mean Moodle doesn’t have such a module or activity as a notebook. Nor does Blackboard Vista. Well, they do have blogs and notes sections, but they’re so-o badly designed that I do not want [...]
Posted in Instructional Design, Learning Language Teaching, Statistics, Teacher Skills on Dec 29th, 2008
According to MacLachlan (1986) сited by E. L. Criswell (1989, pp 36-39) the following instructional techniques can help the teacher teach and the student learn: Explaining the benefits of the lesson to the student before or at the beginning of the lesson. Memory is increased when the student is paying attention. That’s logical though sometimes [...]
