Creating e-resources

Dear all

Many thanks for your contributions in today's session. As Sharmin said, "I never realised it could be so easy."

Of course, when using technology you need to think about a number of things:

a) The content - is it appropriate? Does it aid learning, etc? How does it fit into the overall lesson?

b) The skills of your learners. Some learners, and teachers, are intimidated by technology. I know when I started an e-teaching course a few months ago, I was worried that my skills were not up to scratch. Learners may need a lot of support with using the technology. If you want them to use mobile devices in the classroom, they may not have a mobile phone or may feel embarrassed by their clunky device.

c) The language used. If the resource uses a lot of jargon, it can be off-putting for learners. In addition, documents may be formatted in a way which makes them difficult for learners to navigate.

d) Availability and performance of the technology. Learners will become very frustrated if it takes a long time to conntect to a particular website. The moral of the story is to always have a contingency plan rather than relying solely on technology.

Well done for creating some fantastic resources - I have included them below and feel free to add to the page if you wish. I take on board your comments that perhaps we should introduce these tools earlier on in the course.

Created with Padlet

Finally, I'd recommend this book to all those interested in integrating technology. I've tried out a couple of things myself.

Listening

As you know, ESOL learners can struggle with listening. On the CELTA course, we advocate a kind of cycle approach: prelistening (e.g. talking about pictures related to the topic), during listening (completing a task of some kind) and a post listening (e.g. a roleplay). However, comprehension questions in coursebooks tend to be rather similar, e.g. 'How old is the speaker?' and require the learners to listen out for very specific details. I'm not sure we always do this - we would ask the speaker to repeat a point if we didn't understand something.

This article questions the value of setting comprehension questions. Thornbury (2001, 'Uncovering Grammar') also makes a distinction between comprehension and comprehending questions. The latter look more at language, e.g. "How did the speaker ask for something to be repeated? "Why do you think he said '....' in this context?' etc.

This article explains how to liven up listening lessons. If you have any ideas, let us all know by commenting below. I like to vary the way I give feedback on listening activities, e.g. holding up 'true/false cards', standing under the correct letter - a, b or c or really exploiting a task. For example, I remember when I did my diploma (many years ago!) I did a listening lesson for my external assessed lesson. I was very nervous as I was teaching a proficiency class and these learners were excellent. The listening was about a famous artwork. After listening for gist and detail, we looked at some of the language in the audio and practised this. The learners then had to use the expressions to talk about a piece of artwork they knew (pictures provided if not).

Hope you have some new ideas.

Different approaches to writing

In today's approach we looked at approaches to writing: process, product and genre. It is difficult to get your head around these approaches.

This short presentation gives you a summary of the approaches.

Possible post

Dear all

This post might be of some interest:

Job

It's functional English rather than ESOL but it's worth finding out about. The learners are likely to be ESOL students.

Phonology

We have now looked at four areas of phonology: word and sentence stress, connected speech, intonation and sounds (the phonemic script). Hope you find the summary below useful.

Phonology mindmap

Teaching pronunciation

Adrian Underhill, who wrote 'Sounds English' advocates a slightly different approach to teaching pronunciation. Watch the four clips to see what his approach is and answer the questions as you go along. What is your opinion of the approach?


Teaching pronunciation 1 Teaching pronunciation 2 Teaching pronunciation 3 Teaching pronunciation 4 (sorry about the spelling in the link) If you are interested, you can watch his whole presentation on You Tube:

Deeper thinking skills

Here is an article written by Jim Scrivener on getting leaners to really produce language not just produce correct responses.

article


What do you think? Feel free to comment below.

Quick grammar guide

I don't know if you've come across the British Council site yet but it has some great ideas on it.  This is a useful grammar guide although you would probably need to look at the language in more depth.

Guide

Top tips

Here are some tips to help you prepare for the new level. Good luck to everyone.

Keeping your learners interested

If you have 15 minutes to spare, you might want to look at this video/podcast on how to keep your learners interested. It's based on a talk given by Penny Ur who wrote 'A course in English Language Teaching' Click here




I hope that you feel a bit more confident about being in the classroom and are willing to experiment in your approach. Think about the following:

a) Give the learners meaningful practice - beyond the gap fill! How you can encourage the learners to collaborate with each other? For example, if you want the learners to ask each other questions, do they have to have the same questions? Can you divide up tasks so that learners ask each other different questions, perhaps to complete a questionnaire or a table?


b) Personalise the language (Jo Gakonga mentions this). Individuals like to relate language to their own lives so ensure the learners have opportunities to talk about their own lives.


c) Vary your approach. Avoid lots of PowerPoint slides with lots of text on them. You will need to provide the learners with input but there should be a balance between teacher talking time and student talking time.


d) Think about warmers that 'sparkle' - that get the learners interested.

Review of key terms

We're halfway through the course so here's a quiz to check your knowledge of 15 key terms. There are 5 types of quizzes you can try: Click here

The inductive approach

This is a summary of how to use an inductive approach to teach grammar. What do you think are the pros and cons of such an approach?

Assignment 4: Lessons from the classroom

Assignment 4 is all about reflecting on your progress, how you propose to work on your action points and how you will continue learning after the course. Please read through the assignment brief to make sure you are clear on everything; I have summarised it in the audio below.

listen to ‘Remember to water the flowersboo’ on Audioboo

Pronunciation activities

For those interested in integrating phonology in your lessons (and in the future, hopefully), this is a useful summary of some top pronunciation activities: Click here

Authentic use

This is what you have produced (so far!!)

Concept checking

Please find below the graffiti wall that you created using your mobiles

Created with Padlet

A different way of remembering how to concept check. Watch the short film: <