Gaskell and Cobb (2004)

In the article of Gaskell and Cobb (2004), online concordance can be used to help a group of low-intermediate level students improve their writing skills. Feedback is given to students on word-level and sentence-level errors through the authentic data base. For my own teaching environment, it seems to be impossible to implement it because my students are low-motivated and low ability students. They even don't know how to write simple sentences, let alone understand the explanations given in this software. Therefore, I think it is for high-motivated and self-motivated learners. They will find this more convenient and useful for self learning than paper dictionaries.

Schwienhorst(2003)

In this paper, Schwienhorst(2003) points out 5 misunderstandings about the learner autonomy and 3 useful perspectives on learner autonomy. They are individual-cognitive perspective,social-interactive perspective and experimental-participatory perspective. Individual-cognitive perspective emphasizes on improving the learners' existing constructs especially for their language and linguistic awareness. As mentioned by Schwienhorst, the process may be difficult and even painful. I think if we need to change our learning habit, it needs a lot of practice and psychological changes. It is really hard and it will cause a lot of tensions for learners. As to social-interactive perspective, it is based on Vygotsky's zone of proximal development(1978). Learners can learn better and improve themselves by working with their classmates through interpersonal interaction and collaborative work. Social interaction can increase consciousness through scaffolding (Bruner & Ratner, 1978)and corrective feedback(Kohonen, 1992). Students need scaffolding when they do the interaction and collaborative work otherwise they will be out of track or chatting since they don't know how to do. Corrective feedback especially written feedback can make students understand better how they have performed so that they can perform better next time. As for the experimental-participatory perspective, learners are encouraged to take control and responsibility of their learning. They should monitor and evaluate their learning process. All these three perspectives share a concern for reflection. Also, the medium of writing also plays a main role in these perspectives.
In this article, the writer also mentions one example of implementation of learners autonomy which is tandem learning(Little & Brammerts,1996).In tandem learning, two learners of complementary L1-L2 combinations are brought together in a tandem pair and they communicate via face-to-face, emails, audio or video conferencing, etc. There are many advantages and problems in this program, however, it provides empirical data for study about synchronous and asynchronous communication media.

Blogging

Blogging is really new to me. I really don't have the habit to write on my blog and check my blog for any new posts. However, as an educational tool, it is extremely useful since we can see others' work easily(of course not for copying) and comment on them. Also, it is very interesting to see others commenting on your own view. We may share the same ideas or have opposite opinions. It doesn't matter since it is only a forum for us to share our ideas out of friendly intention. Afterall, it is an useful tool for teachers to share their ideas among their students without printing a lot of teaching materials. It is environmental friendly as well.

IVD Project by Liou H.C.(1994)

In this article, I find that IVD project is very comprehensive and interactive. It provides all sources of help to students and provides an authentic and adaptive learning environment by incorporating video into a personal computer. It is user-friendly. Students can learn without the instructions of teachers because whenever they need help, they can just click on the icons. However, it demands a lot of preparation work if it is done by teachers. It requires some sophisticated usage of computer software to create all the prototype hypertexts, database,icons and so on. In addition, the scripts of the movie should be transcribed as subtitles both in English and Chinese which consumes a lot of time. I don’t deny the effectiveness of IVD language teaching but I doubt how much time we can afford for preparing it. In fact, it’d better to purchase the ready made one instead of developing one on our own. Otherwise, it will be a nightmare for all teachers. However, it may be a good idea for the IVD developers to follow to develop such kind of products to help students and teachers in their learning and teaching.

Creating quizzes with Hot Potatoes

Hot potatoes is really an useful software for creating cloze passage, matching and sequencing for the quizzes or exercises. It is easy to handle and quite interactive. I like the cloze passage most because hints can be given to students so that at least they can try to do it on their own. We can create some practice drilling exercises for students to do at their home on their own because they can check the answers immediately. This will save a lot of marking time. It is most useful for some initiative students who do the exercises careful.However, we cannot control the process. They may do the exercises by random. I just wonder how we can check how they perform in the exercises so that we can monitor the students to do them carefully. Otherwise, it will be a waste of time for creating exercises like that.
On the other hand, if we create quizzes with Hot Potatoes, how should we save the results of the students? Are there any functions of checking the students' first result? Maybe they will remember the answers given by the computer and do it again. Can they?

Reflection on Reading 1(CALL)

Computer Assisted Language Learning:
an Introduction
by Mark Warschauer
CALL(computer-assisted language learning) has developed rapidly and is divided into three phases: behavioristic CALL, communicative CALL, and integrative CALL. The behavioristic CALL entailed repetitive language drills and can be referred to as "drill and practice". This is a traditional way of language teaching. It is especially effective for self learning but only for those who are highly motivated. For my students, they feel really bored with practice and drilling.

For communicative CALL, it is a kind of motivation for student to practice English online. It avoids telling students they are wrong and is flexible to a variety of student responses. This CALL model used for communicative activities involves the computer as stimulus. The purpose of this CALL model is to stimulate students' discussion, writing, or critical thinking. In my school, we have purchased a kind of i-learning by English language interactive exercises and games. The name of the program is called “I-learner”. (http://www.i-learner.com.hk). The program is very interactive. However, it is quite effective only for some well-behaved students because the students can learn English on their own at home. However, the bad students may just do it by clicking the buttons randomly even though we take them to the computer room to finish it.

Integrative CALL is the combination of behavioristic CALL and communicative CALL. The effectiveness of Integrative CALL depends very much on how teachers and students use the software in learning English Language. In fact, for my students, Integrative CALL is an ideal approach but it is hard to implement it since the students are badly behaved. For the well-behaved students, they are really benefited from the use of multi-media because it provides more authentic learning environment and students have great control over their learning so that they can learn at their own pace. But for my students, they are reluctant to learn no matter what. They like to play computer games such as gambling games. However, when I ask them to do the group project and search for some information on their own, they seem to be unable or reluctant to do it. Last year, 3 out of 8 groups could not finish their projects which required them to use computers.

Reflection on the game "Second Life"

Second Life is a game of virtual life. It is quite interesting that we can change the character as we like. We can fly and explore everywhere. We can create something we like,though with quite limited choice(As I know). I was really excited when I met someone I know online and they looked very funny. It was really funny when I saw my character appearing on other screens but from different angles. I was puzzled sometimes since I was not familiar with the functions of the game. I think it may arouse my students' interest in learning some vocabulary items especially for the functions. It may be better if I take them to the computer room and ask them to create a character on spot for the first time. Then, they should play with their classmates at the same time. I think they will continue to play it at home without my asking them to.

Reflection on the reading

After reading the article "Language Learner Behaviour in a Virtual Environment" by Jannie Roed, I think it may be true that the students will be less inhibited when they talk online. However, the use of language may be an obstacle for them because my students are really weak in English. They are inhibited by the language rather than the mode of communication. Of course, comparing with face-to-face communication in English, virtual world may be a good place for them to practise their English.

Feeling about new technology in language teaching

New Technology in language teaching is really a challenging and stimulating way to teach language. It may be easy and interesting for the younger teachers especially those who live online. However, for older teachers like me, it is really a challenge.

The first post

I find technology very useful but hard to learn because all functions are more or less the same to me. For my students, I find that they are experts when they are playing computer games and searching for online games. However, they seem to be idiots when I ask them to use computer to do their homework or project. I hope I can learn more from this course so that I can create some interesting and interactive lessons for my students. Also, I hope I can set up a blog for my students to help them learn English.

testing

This is for testing only.