Week 4

Week 4 - Going on to Discover New Interesting Things

I start to write this post when we are at the middle of Week 6. It's because my mother's serious sickness and death the week before and I had to come back to my hometown in a rural area of Vietnam to take care of her and see her off to the other world.

There was a lot of things to do there and I tried to work with the course whenever I had time.

The two reading articles of this week are interesting to me. The first one, named Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction (2000) at http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html, is rather long and took me a lot of time reading, but is the one that I really like because it gives me a review of previous research in using Internet in ESL writing instruction and detailed ideas of teaching genres using Internet together with usefule links, which is a good source of reference for my related studies in the future. I did a study on using computers and Internet in teaching and learning ESL writing in 2002, when Web technology was very limited.

I found the second article, i.e., Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL Students Using E-books (2004) at http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Liang-ExtensiveReading.html useful, too, with concrete classroom techniques. However, it is beyond my sixth grade students' proficiency level now. They may be applicable to my class in one or two years. Vietnamese youth nowadays is said to read less, and teenagers like my students usually use computer and Internet for fun. So, this is a good suggestion to lead them to make full use of this technological advance for learning purposes.

This week I also 'had to' describe my class issue, problem, or need. In fact, there are quite a lot issues, but I chose the problem with project work to describe here, which I think technology can help.

I was also asked to write a technology enhanced lesson plan, and project work is the one that I decided to be my lesson content. I sometimes integrate technology to my classroom, but this is the first time I write a detailed lesson plan about this. This job was made easier with the template file given by Robert. I have used Google Docs and shared files with others, so I had no difficulties in this. It would be good if I could try this plan, like what Brigitte Falkner did with her class, to see how successful it is. However, my students here are having 2 weeks off on the occasion of the lunar new year and I have to wait until they come back.

With what I learn and prepare this week, I hope I can make some positive changes in my teaching.

Week 3

English Pronunciation  - My Experience and Interest

Starting learning English at grade 10 at a rural secondary school with teachers of Russian owning one year experience learning English, and hardly with any authentic materials except textbooks in poor quality, I entered the University of Foreign Languages for Teachers in Hanoi, Vietnam thanks to my result of tests on Maths and Literature. The firsts days at university was a disaster for me because I couldn't understand what the teachers said and it was difficult for them to understand me.

My pronunciation was not much better when I finished my four years at university. I knew this through the feedback from my students. Then I by chance got the Cambridge Learner's Dictionary on CD-ROM with sounds by native speakers in both British and American English. I started to practice with this program. Whenever I found a new word or a word of which pronunciation I was not sure about, I checked and practiced it. One year later, I started studying for a master degree and gave presentations in front of the class. I usually got the compliments from my classmates about my good pronunciation. Some of them who studied with me at the tertiary level even asked if I had attended any courses on pronunciation. I felt happy and encouraged. I also received good feedback from my foreign partners and my students.

Later, I got more advanced versions of that electronic dictionary which the allowance for users to record their own voice. And now in the Internet era, it is very convenient to use online dictionaries, but I still keep the installers of those softwares and introduce to my students or my collegues when they ask me for experience in learning English pronunciation. The CDs still work well with those who do not have regular access to the Internet.

My interest in English pronunciation does not stop at that point. I also want to do more to help my students and teachers in Vietnam to better their English pronunication. I am interested in softwares and programs that allow us to record, to analyse, to compare and then to improve our pronuciation. I have searched for swebsites on teaching and learning pronunciation to introduce and guide them.

In 2008, our university bought a speech analysis system from KayPentax, USA for research purposes. I have learnt how to use this system but it is for very professional and special research. I think that I have to study more to able to apply this system.

Attending this course of webskills, thanks to my instructor and my collegues around the world, I know more things relating to this field. I am interested in the article named "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation" suggested by Robert though it is not very easy to read. I am also very interested in Robert's site at https://sites.google.com/site/pronunciationstuff/links with a list full of useful and interesting links for me to discover. And after this week exploring Delicious.com, I can search for the links, keep them in my Delicious at https://delicious.com/#lanhuongnckh and share them with others.

I hope that with my interest and those informative resources, I will be able to create some product on teaching and learning English pronunciation soon.

Week 2

My New Experience in Webskills Course

Week 2 of the course nearly comes to the end, in which I have spent a lot of time reading and discovering new things. This week is quite challenging for me because I also have loads of work at the university to do and many classes to teach.

With search engines, I am used to using Google. I used Yahoo long time ago when I started to use Internet, but not any more now. Thanks Robert for adding "Search Engines" section to the course wiki. It's easier to follow. I think I will spend more time trying those ones.

I spent a lot of time to read about writing objectives and Bloom's taxonomy. I realize that writing objectives is important. This is not the first time I hear about Bloom's taxonomy, but it is the first time I read it carefully and try writing objectives. It's not very easy for me to understand and to write this. I look forward to receive Robert's and my global collegues' comments on what I have done.

I also got started with my course project with a description of one of the classes I teach. I tried to describe it as detailed as possible. I really want to know if my students learn better with the help of technology. Maybe I will do an action research about this.

Week 1

This is not my first blog. I create this just for reflecting what I learn in this webskills course.

I have tried another blog where I write posts and share them with my students in Google's Circles.

I think blog is a useful tool for language teaching and I will try to create one blog for each of my classes.

I also intend to teach my students to create their own blog to post their  project products.