Week 3 - " We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give".

Hi, My Dear Journal.

I must confess that I missed you. I have always thought that writing what you have experienced is very easy, but now I see that there is so much to reflect on that I even don’t know what to start with.

Probably I will start with my first steps in Week-3.

I began with exploring the learning objectives and the tasks. 
The first task – creating Delicious page - appealed to me so much that I decided to create my delicious page as soon as I understood the procedure. When I succeeded in that I felt really proud. Again my tip “Yes, I Can” worked and made its input.

 All internet users have their favourite sites and I am not an exception. I have always wanted to bookmark mine and sometimes instead of doing it I copy-pasted the links and saved them in word doc., and very often I lost them. So, creating Delicious page is a solution to the problem.

This time I am sure my bookmarks will be safe and I will refer to them without any problems. Moreover, I have already told my colleagues at school about delicious.com. Some of them have already started creating theirs after they visited mine at http://delicious.com/elmisha/.

What I like about taking the course is the fact that whatever you learn you can probe and apply, share and make your peers use the tools that you have already practiced. At the same time studying is not an easy thing to do, as we also have a lot of reading materials for analysis and discussion.

For the second task we had to read one of the articles about CALL, review two websites and share comments about the sites in discussion forums.

I read Lyndsay Miller’s article Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials and found out that it gave very interesting information on improving listening skills. While reading the article I had a feeling that I had already read it, but then I figured out that this was exactly what we thought we had to do when I started teaching. 

The main question for us teachers, who had never met native speakers or spoke to them, was how to make our students understand the spoken language and respond properly. At that time we could well very read, translate the texts and learn them by heart. 

 Whenever we met a native speaker the tongue "froze" and all the vocabulary disappeared. Later I understood why it happened. The key lay in the lack of real communication which implied speaking and listening.

At the same time very much depends on the methods of teaching and the materials that the teacher uses. The lessons on listening should “allow learners a greater degree of independence when confronted with listening to the foreign language in a real world context, and that means using authentic texts”.

What can the students listen to in the classroom? What can the teacher bring to the classroom to provide the students with authentic listening materials? Radio, TV and Video, CD or DVD or Internet resources? All of these resources are available, but to what extend are the valuable and effective?

Radios – They are easy to access, but at the same time they are the most difficult of aural text for learners to listen to because the non-verbal information is missing. This is the information that helps understand the message, and the learners have to focus on the listening skill which is most difficult for them.

TV and Video - Television and Videos in the classroom gives the learners opportunity to have more information when listening. The students can both see what is happening and listen to the text. Non-verbal information is now available to the learners and the learners can improve “their listening skills in a richer language context”. Watching films or TV shows in English is a great way to help you improve your English. Especially your listening skills, but you can also improve your spoken English too.

 Nowadays internet resources have become a part of our and the students’ everyday life. So I explored the net and found some sites that I would like to share.

I decided to begin with one site that gives a lot of possibilities;

http://www.learnenglish.de/ImproveEnglish/improvelisteningpage.htm

It provides the users not only with links to films in English but also offers the tips on how to use films to improve the language. Moreover it recommends film pages. The only thing that I felt not very comfortable about was that the films were not free (though the price was not very high, still we have to pay).

The site also provides a lot of links for audio books, so while listening read the script one can read the script. Besides, there are many vocabulary and dictation pages.  Every Wednesday there is a listening session on Skype.

The site is good and I would recommend it for use with adult learners.

 This site http://learnenglishkids.britishcouncil.org/en/ I use in my classroom with the children who just start learning the language as it is a great tool for those who want to improve the basic skills.

The site provides the teachers, students and their parents with free games, songs, stories and activities for children.  It also has all types of pre, while and post-listening activities in the “Listen and Watch section”. It has great variety of songs, short stories, kids talk, kids’ news and tongue twisters.

I have used this site for several years; it has listening materials for all the topics from A to Z.

I strongly recommend this site for the Primary school teachers, their students and parents.

The Project task was the one as that gave us the idea of the Final task – Writing a Project. It was great to read and analyze real projects created by the teachers who took the courses previously. When I looked one of them through I asked myself: “How long did it take the author to create such a project?”  Then I reread it and found there the rubrics that we had already learned. So, I think it will not be hard for us to create the similar one only provided that we study well. :-)

 Camellia Pagila, the author of the project, is from Romania.  Her class is similar to mine (the one I selected for the project). The class consists of 30 students (age 12-13) and is divided into two groups – 15 students in each.  The students have English twice a week, each class lasts 50 minutes. All the students are familiar with computers and internet and have internet access at home.

The teacher analyzed her students’ needs and set the goals and the learning objectives. The first stage of the project is focused on developing writing skills and creating three blogs: creative writing, off-class English Drama activities and in-class activities. The timeline of the project is 14 weeks – 13 weeks for implementing the project and 1 week for assessment.

The project is well organized and is based on the textbook:  English Scrapbook-OUP which gives the teacher opportunity to organize her lessons according to the syllabus and integrate technology in the classroom. The author of the project also provides the rubrics for assessing the students’ work.

All the activities are described in details and the tasks are clearly understood. The author of the project also provides the rubrics for assessing the students’ work.

I believe the students enjoyed the project as they had a great chance to make their posts, respond to other students’, work in blogs, report on their in- and off-class activities, and write dairies. In my opinion, all these activities are designed to motivate students’ learning and build their web skills through interaction.  

 Camelia did a great job and I am sure she was one of the best online students. 

  

Week 3 brought me more confidence and one more time proved the meaning of the saying: “ Better Learn, Better Teach”.

Bye, My Dear Journal.

See you next week!