CALL Experience

The CALL class had a very positive influence on my perspectives on teaching ESL/EFL courses because it introduced me to a variety of CALL tools that I found very beneficial to use in my future classes. My favorite CALL tool is blogs and the main reason behind choosing this CALL tool is that I personally had the opportunity to use it on a weekly basis through this semester and witness its advantages. As a non-native speaker of English, I personally think that over the course of this semester, my writing anxiety has been reduced because of my frequent posts on blogs. Hence, I believe that encouraging students to use blogs can be very fruitful not only for improving their writing and reading skills, but also for giving them the opportunity to expand their audience and enter the world of blogging. So, I will definitely incorporate blogs in my future writing classes and I will always remember these lovely blogs we used to share in the CALL class.

Teaching with Blogs

Last week, I attended an e-Teaching Symposium held at UIC entitled “Teaching with Blogs: Tips and Best Practices from the Trenches. The presenter Dr. Jason Rhode – assistant director of the Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center at Northern Illinois University – gave us a very good presentation about this great CALL tool. In this Symposium the presenter shared lessons learned from incorporating instructor and student blogs into an online course as well as practical recommendations for those considering utilizing blogs in online learning. The presenter also reviewed sample instructor and student blogs and demonstrated a number of activities designed specifically for blogs.
I thought that this was a very good opportunity for me as a future ESL/EFL teacher and I really learned a lot from this seminar.
The symposium is posted on blogger. You can view it by clicking on this link http://uicblogs.blogspot.com/

blackboard

I really think that blackboard is a very good learning tool that can help language teachers and teachers of other subjects create personalized and engaging learning experiences that can result in better learning outcomes. I actually read a little bit about blackboard and I found that it is not only one of the most popular learning management systems in the world, but also its brochure mentions that currently more than 700 teachers are using it for over 2000 courses, a dramatic progress from only six in 1999 (http://www.blackboard.com).
The good thing about Blackboard is that it is equipped with some tools so that it can function as an authoring tool for the learning content, an administrative tool, and as a means of communication. The content authoring features in Blackboard can be used for pure online or blended learning. As an administrative tool, Blackboard is capable of recording all students’ access to the materials and it can help teachers - especially language teachers - see their students’ progress so that they can make further reflections.
As a communication tool, Blackboard provides emails (in one-to-one and public exchanges) and discussion boards. In addition, I read that Blackboard can also integrate other communication tools from other operators that can enable users to communicate using voice bulletin boards or voice emails.

Videoconferencing

As a non-native teacher of English, I would use videoconferencing in my EFL classes in order to invite native speakers to be my online guests and participate in a specific class discussion. I believe that by doing so students will be able to practice their listening and speaking skills and will have valuable opportunities to participate in discussions with native speakers of English. I do not think that I will be using videoconferencing outside of the classroom because some students may not have high-speed Internet connection, which will cause several technical problems. The other problem with videoconferencing is that it’s a synchronous tool and students may not be able to participate in the video conference outside of the classroom simultaneously. I think that I will use Tokbox or Meebo in my classes because they are Free and easy to use.

E-Journaling

In the article "A Web-Based Approach to Strategic Learning of Speech Acts" the authors documented how E-journaling can be effective in helping students improve their pragmatic skills of speech acts.

I think that e-journaling can be useful in an ESL setting. My favorite type of E-journaling is blogs. Based on my experience in the CALL class and specifically in creating blogs on a weekly basis, I really think that blogs can be very useful for ESL students. They can learn from each other’s ideas and feedbacks, and they can also share their opinions with the rest of the world, as it is not restricted to the classroom. I think that ESL instructors should incorporate blogs in their syllabi and encourage their students to use them in their classrooms.

Wikis

I personally support using Wikis in ESl/EFL classrooms and I think that it’s a great CALL tool that can help students collaborate and work together at a distance. I can totally see myself using it especially in my future writing classes because I believe that it will create a useful learning opportunity for my students.

I think that teachers should not assume that students have the same computer literacy and should spend some time teaching students how to use this tool. I think that this is going to be a great investment that will pay off later when students benefit from this tool and start using it efficiently.

My main concern about Wikis is that students may get intimidated if any of their group members edited or deleted their parts. Another problem is that students may make some unnecessary changes that other group members may not approve. So, teachers should encourage students to be accepting of other students’ participations and guide them in using this collaborative tool.

Project Proposal

I’m planning to use HospitalEnglish.com to teach advanced medical students enrolled in a computer equipped medical English classroom that is part of an ESP program. The purpose of using this web site in addition to other websites mentioned below is to develop students’ vocabulary, reading, listening, pronunciation, and speaking skills associated with asthma disease. First, students will be introduced to key vocabulary associated with asthma disease and will hear the pronunciation of these words. Then, they will listen to a podcast that presents overview information about asthma, followed by multiple choice questions and fill in the blanks exercises. As a follow up activity, students will be divided into groups of 3; each group will be asked to read different authentic articles about asthma and present them in class. By doing so, students will get to practice their reading and speaking skill and will benefit from each other’s presentations by learning more information about this disease. I believe that HospitalEnglish.com, TheFreeDictionary.com, and QsWorkout.com will enhance language acquisition for the targeted students because they will provide them with a variety of activities that incorporate several language skills specifically designed for the targeted students. Moreover, after this lesson, students will learn how to use HospitalEnglish.com for independent learning.


Link to web sites that I will be using:

TheFreeDictionary.com

Asthma Quiz

Online Asthma Articles

Airport Transportation Podcast

The following podcast is designed to provide low-intermediate ESL/EFL students with information about airport transportation options in the United States.

Helpful vocabulary from this lesson:

Click on each of the words below for a link to the online free dictionary.


Transportation
Get around
Travel
Comfort
Airport
Shuttle
Taxi
Limousine
Expensive
Option
Book(v)
Reserve(v)
Order(v)
Service
Guest
Fixed
Rate
Receipt
Cheat
Destination
Style

Pre-listening activity:

Before you listen to the podcast, answer the following questions:

• Do you like traveling? If yes, Why? If no, why not?
• When you travel, how do you usually get around from the airport?

Now please listen to the following podcast:

Airport Transportation Podcast


Post-listening activity:

After listening to the podcast, please answer the following questions:

• List the transportation options discussed in the podcast?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of each option?
• Which one do you prefer? Why?


Useful links:

• Airport shuttle companies in the USA
• Taxi Services in the USA
• Limousine Services in the USA

Reflections on readings 2/23

I think that the tips for teaching writing with CALL mentioned in chapter 4 of the CALL textbook were very useful especially the one that suggests teaching students how to benefit from interactive help and feedback from the computer. I believe that teaching students through CALL writing activities such as blogs can encourage them to continue writing outside the classroom (bigger audience).

In “Writing to mean: Computer-mediated feedback in online tutoring of multidraft compositions” article, I truly agree with the author that teachers should be focusing on the question-form comments because I really think that this strategy will push students to be independent learners.

As far as the question posed in “Can learners use concordance feedback for writing errors?” article is concerned, I think that if concordances can help students in correcting vocabulary and grammar, then why not use it? But I think that students cannot depend on it for content and development of supportive ideas. So, they can use it for a specific purpose but they will still need their teacher’s guidance and feedback.

TESOL with Jing

This video podcast features a conversation between two teachers of English as a second/foreign language who give a quick tutorial for a very powerful computer screen capture software called Jing. The video also presents multiple scenarios on how to use this tool for teaching English as a second/foreign language.

Useful websites:
Jing
Screencast.com

Pros & Cons of Voicethreads

Based on chapter 6 of the CALL textbook, I would say that voicethreads are just like other technology-based tools, which all have both advantages and disadvantages that ESL/EFL teachers should be aware of when using them. Generally speaking, I think that voicethreads can provide a good opportunity for practicing oral language outside of the class. However, I believe that voicethreads can be useful ONLY if they were well designed and integrated into the lessons especially by providing explicit online learning. I think that one of the main advantages of this software is allowing its users to embed audio and video media, which can be really useful for authentic learning. Also, a big plus of this CALL tool is its interactivity feature, which allows students to practice speaking while interacting with other speakers. However, voicethreads have some disadvantages such as the over reliance on the teacher’s feedback and corrections in order to maintain improving his/her students’ speaking and pronunciation skills. Another limitation of this software is that students will only learn one variety of English only (teacher’s variety of English), and does not expose students to a variety of pronunciations of English (dialects & accents).

English with Jennifer

Please check out this ESL vocabulary expressions video lesson inspired by Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, provided by the English instructor, materials writer and consultant “Jennifer ESL”.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JenniferESL?blend=2&ob=1#p/u/10/lc8gLJWZS3o

So I’m going to evaluate this lesson from the point of view of an instructor:

First of all, I liked how the presenter linked the new vocabulary to her hometown and that she introduced them in an authentic thematic way. I also liked the fact that this video was recorded in an unconventional setting that actually reflects the topic that the lesson was inspired from. However, the background noise of the street seemed a little distracting to me.
Unlike the rest of the video presenters, I liked the fact that her tone, pace and body language were natural. I also appreciate the fact that she did not overwhelm her students with a huge amount of new vocabulary, but I think that this 8 minutes video could’ve introduced a little more expressions than the few ones presented by the instructor. Overall I think that this was a successful video as it provided students with a plenty of room for practicing the new expressions and most importantly for providing students as well as teachers with a list of references to consult at the end of the video.

Learning English with “Misterduncan”

Please check out this hilarious ESL video that I came across on YouTube while searching for some “good” ESL videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjvN6FTtB60&feature=channel

So I’m going to evaluate this video from the point of view of a student:

First of all, I would say that although the instructor’s tone and body language were very odd and sarcastic, his unconventional way of presenting his lesson has actually attracted my attention and made me want to continue watching his lesson. As an ESL speaker, I liked the fact that his speech was transcribed in the screen, which would assist the overall comprehension. Misterduncan’s introduction about slang was good as he presented some useful information about slang language. I also liked that he introduced slang in both British and American English. However, the amount of new words presented was overwhelming, and he did not leave much room for practicing the new vocabulary. As a student I prefer chucking these new vocabulary into more than one video and giving me some space to practice.

Learning Vocabulary online

The following web site is designed to teach ESL/EFL students useful vocabulary and grammar skills through several CALL activities like multiple-choice quizzes, fill in the blanks tests, matching exercises and crossword puzzles. The activities are sorted into six levels from easy to difficult. There is also an additional section in this website that includes bilingual vocabulary quizzes covering several languages.

I really think that this is a very useful website for learning and reinforcing vocabulary learned especially due to the variety of topics covered in this site. ESL/EFL students can learn vocabulary about several topics that are categorized under nouns, verbs, adjectives, opposites, idioms, phrasal verbs, homonyms, abbreviations, slangs and many more. I truly like the homonyms’ section as it can improve both students’ vocabulary and spelling skills.

I personally would use the exercises of this website as post-task activities for my students to help them practice and reinforce vocabulary learned.

Here is a link of my vocabulary CALL website: http://a4esl.org/

ESL/EFL CALL Website

The following web site is designed to teach English as a second/ foreign language to ESL/EFL students through a combination of CALL activities. The site is designed for different levels and contains several sections for vocabulary, speaking, grammar, listening, reading, writing and other linguistic areas like idioms, proverbs, slang expressions and anagrams.
As far as reading is concerned, this website has a very interesting section that combines the listening and reading skills by providing ESL/ EFL students with readings from different genres that they can read and listen to along flash/MP3. There is also a YouTube videos link that supplements the listening & readings section.
Teaching reading through this CALL website depends on your students' level as well as the genre of your text. One of my ways of teaching reading is to provide prereading, reading, and postreading activities like having students make predictions, listen to the MP3 before, while or after reading the text, summarize it, or relate the reading to their personal experiences.

Here is a link of my CALL website http://www.manythings.org/

I hope you find it useful for your students!

CALL Experience

My very first CALL experience was in one of the courses I took in the MA in Applied Linguistics program entitled "Curriculum Development and Materials Design".This course gave me the opprtunity to learn and use some good CALL tools like Jing, deliscious and webquest. In the following semester, I fortunately got the chance to teach as an intern in a smart classroom at Columbia College Chicago where I was able to utilize some of those CALL tools as well as being able to teach using some other really good ESL websites .

The question that I would post is: do you think that ESL students actually need CALL materials or it just makes your job as a teacher better and easier?