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1 year ago
Thursday, April 8, 2010
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.
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I think this is a great way to incorporate authentic speakers into an EFL setting. One thing you may need to consider is size of the class and the possibility of having multiple video conferences in order to get all the students involved.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that especially in an EFL setting, videoconferencing is a good way to provide authentic input to your students. I believe it not only helps students practice listening and speaking skills, but also nonverbal cues as well as the cultural aspects of communication. These aspects of learning a language are so important in gaining communicative competence, and we have a responsibility to teach them to our students. It is also important to expose our students to current means of communication, even though some, or even many, of them might not have access to this technology outside of the classroom.
ReplyDeleteI cannot agree more with what you guys have said. I think that having multiple video conferences is great in terms of getting all or most of the students involved but this might be at the expense of other things. I think that multiple videoconferencing may result in a great noise and and some people may not be able to focus or listen and speak audibly.
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