Week 3: Acquainted with Sound-based language skills building websites and bookmarking with Delicious

The week 3 of Web Skills course we have discussed and learned how to teach our students listening and speaking skill and pronunciation skills through Computer Aided learning materials. The statement given by Maria Grazia Busa has been authentic when she in her article entitled “New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation” has rightly remarked, “CALL applications both promote language learning objectives and overcome traditional language classroom constrains.” This week has been very helpful for me because I come across various useful websites recommend in our course of week 3 and by my peers.

As I am very enthusiastic to develop my learners’ pronunciation, I have gone through Maria’s article on teaching pronunciation first. Here I come to know how we can employ the new technology to develop our learners’ pronunciation. I also come to know that it has been more effective to teach pronunciation in prosody than teach it in isolated individual words. I have found that our learners can have native people as their teachers if we let them practice pronunciation through CALL materials and websites. Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) system “is to provide learners with private, stress-free practice with individualized and instantaneous feedback on pronunciation” (Maria). I have also learned about the use of speech analysis software which “allows learners to record and visualize their speech output on their computer monitors to obtain real-time information about the acoustic properties of this output” (Maria). Afterwards I visited the websites recommended in our course that are designed for developing pronunciation. I have planned to use some of the recommended websites with my students as soon as possible. Unfortunately I have not been able to manage time to read other two articles i.e. The Employment of CALL in Teaching Second/Foreign Language Speaking Skills by Julia Gong and Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials by Lindsay Miller. From Nicenet discussion, I have been informed that my peers have found these two articles very helpful.

My fear of preparing my final project has been lessen to some great extent because I have got a practical experience of going through sample project reports prepared by previous participants of Web Skills course. I have acquired the practical idea how to design, prepare and implement our final project by bringing a change related to technology use in our classroom. It really helps me a great deal overcome my fear. In this week, I have come across delicious site and have created my delicious page. It is really wonderful to bookmark our favorite websites. Having a delicious page has a great advantage. Now I can open the list of bookmarked websites from any computer at any place. I can also bookmark ample websites/URLs and can categorize the sites or pages with the given ‘tags’ to search for these very quickly. I have also invited my peers to help me develop my delicious page and provide me useful web links.   

Week 2: Various Web Search tools and The A.B.C.D. method of writing objectives

Week 2 in this course has been comparatively quite challenging for me. I have been very busy throughout this week in my Web Skills course. As a coordinator of Comilla BELTA Chapter, I joined South Asian Teachers Associations Peer Support Review followed by 6^th BELTA International Conference from January 16, 2013 to January 21, 2013 in order to strengthen the performance BELTA (Bangladesh English Language Teachers Association) and my Chapter. I moved to Dhaka from my district, Comilla and stayed there for those days. We participated in a 2-day workshop lead by George Pickering, an experienced educational coach, consultant and trainer. This PSR event helped us and other members from the regional TA network to review BELTA’s activities and make constructive suggestions to make it more effective from our findings and observation. I also led a team of 23 teachers who attended this conference from Comilla BELTA chapter and returned my district on January 22, 2013.

However, I had to manage time to focus on the second week of my course. This very week has been a great experience for me to shape the way I use website so that I can get maximum benefits from it and can manage the best recourses from web search tools to integrate these into my teaching. I come to know that Google is “not the best choice if you are looking for academic sources or their specialized needs” (Healey Deborah, 2009)” Apart from Google, I discovered a number of web search engines which can be best used for designing ELT lessons. Before week 2 in this course, I had outdated idea about web search tool. Besides, I also learned some useful ideas for making any web search successful such as avoiding articles, using quotation marks, using and (+), not (-), and or to limit or expand my search (Healey Deborah, 2009) while entering a key word or phrase into the basic entry pane of my search engine.

The A.B.C.D. method of writing objectives is another important skill I have acquired from this course. I learned our lesson for ELT class will be more effective if we compose the lesson objectives which include Audience (A), Behavior (B), Condition (C), and Degree (D). I have also practiced composing the objectives of a lesson by following the A.B.C.D. method. I also learned that objectives should be overt and observable performance and should include behaviors to observe (Pennsylvania State University's Teaching and Learning office). Bloom’s revised Taxonomy and using appropriate verbs to write objectives are also essential learning experiences from week 2.

In order to prepare my project task, I have selected one of my classes to try out a web technology with my learners and have described it on Nicenet. We have been informed that selecting a class is the initial step in working towards creating a final project. I expect to create an effective final project for my class.

Week 1: Introduction & Orentation to the Course; Previewing the Course Material

My first week in the course entitled "Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web" offered by University of Oregon has been a wonderful discovery for me to know how blog can be used to teach our learners English. We have had a good start here and have classmates across the world to share our views, thoughts and experiences with. We have also found our course instructor much friendly and helpful.

In this week we have specially learned the importance of maintaining a blog in TEFL or TESL class. Graham Stanley (2005) and Aaron Patric Campbell (2003) rightly consider blog as "an online journal." I come to know from Campbell's article a blog is an online journal "that an individual can continuously update with his or her own words, ideas, and thoughts through software that enables one to easily do so." Unlike traditional 'paper' and 'pen' journal, this online journal through blog is one of the best way to make a portfolio of our information and documents and store these in decorated way.

I come to know we can use blog in productive way with our learners in our ELT class. We also can teach them English meaningfully and contextually through it. It is one of the best way for developing students' reading and writing skills. Reading information in English also helps our students to enrich their vocabulary and many language forms. Blog can also help learns develop their critical skills when they are asked to comment on other writings which represent one's idea. It is also a good way to encourage introvert and shy learners to participate and express themselves in a blogs (Graham Stanley, 2005). It also builds a sense of community and relationships with the class. Of course, a blog brings in positive and effective result for an English language teacher only if a blog is properly used with the learners. Blogs should be maintained with adequate innovations and is decorated with the effect of arising learners' motivation in TEFL or TESL class. A teacher should thinks critically in using blog to teach a rich language like English. Larry Ferlazzo (2008) rightly says, "I believe that technology can be a huge asset specifically in second-language learning."

We were asked to make a blog as a week task and panic seized me at first. I thought that it would be much challenging for me. However, I was properly guided to make it happen. After all, it was a great discovery for me to make a blog. I am thinking to use it as soon as possible with my learners in order to teach them English in an innovative way and teach them with fun .