Week 3
Hi everyone. This is what I learned form week 3 materials.
Conferencing Topic: Week 3 Discussion
–Aural/Oral Skill Building:
Having read coursemates posts on Aural/
Oral Skill Building, I was surprised to see there are many recommended sites to
develop listening skills. Some of my students told me that it is hard for them
to find suitable sites for listening practice. For instance, RealEnglish (http://www.real-english.com) and Randall's
ESL Cyber Listening Lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/
shows the level of listening materials. My students should be able to find
suitable listening materials from these sites. Until this time, I did not know
there is a site which even provides Pre-listening, While-listening and
Post-listening activities such as Randall's ESL Cyber Listening Lab: http://www.esl-lab.com/. It was a good
surprise. I will use this site for my classes.
Delicious com:
Delicious page is very useful. Even if when
I find good websites to use for classes, I don’t save the list of websites. So
it always takes time to recall my memories to find the sites which I found
before. By using Delicious com, I do not have to do that anymore.
Danna gives me detailed explanation of
making a page on Delicious com. I thought it was easy to follow the steps. I bought
my computer about 5 years ago. I did not update Internet explorer. Thus my
computer told me I should install Internet explorer 11. To use Internet
explorer11, I have to install windows7 support pack 1. I took me a few hours
and it did not work out. In the end, I went to my parents’ house to borrow
their computer to make my Delicious page. I learned that the computer setting
is also important to use technology in the classroom. I should update my
computer.
Read final projects:
I enjoyed reading final projects of former participants.
It gave me a whole picture of this course. I especially interested in Aleyda
Linare's project. She shows the advantages of using a bog in a class. Blogging
enhance the reading skills, writing skills, and communication skills. I especially liked her final step. Students
were given the materials to study grammar in the first step. They had to find
the materials to study grammar by themselves in the last step. This step
developed student learning autonomy. I think learning autonomy is very
important, because instructors cannot teach everything in a class. 
Hello Megumi,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the websites recommended by Donna and course participants provide a lot of quality materials for listening and speaking practice. I must admit that I do not pay much attention to the variety of exercises that enhance listening skills. However, this will change with the help of these websites.
Your post about Aleyda's project motivated me to read it (I haven't done it yet), especially because of your statement that the final step of the project develops student learning autonomy, which I also consider as rather important, not just because we cannot teach the students everything in the class, but also because we should teach them how to learn.
Best regards,
Visnja, Serbia