An amazing Week 4

A single conversation with a wise man is better than ten years of study.  ~Chinese Proverb

Wow, wow!!! What a lot of constructive tips and instructions we got during Week 4. As the continuation of CALL in teaching, we had to go through the materials for improving students’ skills of reading and writing, vocabulary and grammar. I have to admit that I am really, really fascinated with all rewarding web pages I discovered. As this topic was in our weekly assignment, I  have read the available material. The first instructions and tips I read were at http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Krajka-WritingUsingNet.html . This document is so great because many rewarding tips can be found. The things I like about this are three elements that are included: web pages, e-mail connection and creating class web sites. 

In this material, many interesting and useful web pages can be found but which are so rewarding for boosting students’ skills of writing and speaking. I also visited two multi-skill web sites.

The first one is available at http://fog.ccsf.edu/~lfried/ . I like this site so much and I would recommend this site to my colleagues to share it with their students. Firstly, when we open the site there is a flower and all activities are sorted on it. The students can choose which activity they want to do. For instance, when we click ‘grammar’ activity and when it opens there are two ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ exercises with explanations and quizzes. The students can do the exercises and they can see the results immediately. This site can be suitable from beginner to advanced level and students can improve all skills which are necessary for better knowledge of English.

The second multi-skill web site is available at http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html. It is ESL Independent Study Lab. This site is so, so wonderful and constructive because it contains over 250 of the best Internet resources for EFL/ESL students. All web sites are clearly annotated and it is organized by language level. The site also includes all activities for developing and improving students’ skills of writing, speaking, listening, grammar and vocabulary. All levels are taken into account:
Level 100 = beginner/advanced beginner
Level 200 = intermediate
Level 300 = upper intermediate
Level 400 = advanced.

Our second task was to choose one of the lessons from our curriculum and to write a lesson plan by using the template from the University of South Carolina. If someone wants to down load the template, here it is as a word document (Word .doc file). This was a great experience by adopting a new way of writing my lesson plan.

The third task was to describe some issues concerning the technology which might help with a new way of teaching and learning in and out of the class. I will present you my class and some issues in this post.

I will describe 9^th grade. There are seventeen students in this class and they are all so wonderful. I must admit that I am happy when I enter into this class. Many students have a great knowledge of English while others have lower, but they are very active during the lessons and they are always ready to take part in challenges. They are also willing to help each other in order to achieve better goals. Some of them also participate in different competitions (e.g. municipal, regional). There are many of them who also attend the additional classes of English because they want to gain more knowledge.

These students have got regular access to the Internet when they are in IT classroom, especially when they need something for their school-works or home-works. They also use IT technology for watching some movies from certain subjects (e.g. History) in the information technology classroom.

It is very difficult to carry out the other lectures in IT classroom because students have the lessons from this subject, too. The majority of students also have regular access to the Internet at their homes, but two students do not have it at all. As they are very cooperative, they are always willing to help those students who do not have the Internet at home.

As I mentioned previously that the whole school is not covered with the Internet network, it is very hard to incorporate the technology in active teaching in my school. Therefore, my classroom is not furnished with all necessary tools for teaching and learning. The class I described is very enthusiastic about learning and they are interested into the group works, but from my point of view the course books look so dull and are not motivating ones. In some cases, the students are not motivated by this ordinary way of teaching and learning. On the other hand, they have English lessons twice a week (a lesson lasts for 45 minutes) and it is not enough to complete every task. Consequently, they need something new that would encourage them to achieve better goals and to gain more knowledge. They are also eager and willing to discover the new ways of learning and to apply it in every life situation.

On the other hand, it is also difficult for me to track students’ progress because I am the only teacher of English in my school. It means that I teach English from the third to the ninth class and I have many lessons per-week. Therefore, I also have some difficulties of finding and organizing the material for my teaching, because it takes a lot of time. I have to write lesson plans almost everyday, because it’s the rule of the school. Honestly speaking, I cannot always catch up with all things because I have to prepare every lesson carefully and to make it motivating for my students and I am always busy thinking ahead how to prepare the lessons.

To conclude, I am very interested into e-mailing. In the future, my idea is to create an e-mailing community where I would also take part because I want to help my students to improve their skills of writing and reading. I also think about creating a class web page where students can actively collaborate and discuss about different topics concerning their development of writing and speaking skills.  

This way of improving writing, speaking and vocabulary can be of a great advantage. In this way, students can collaborate and discuss about different topics. They can also develop their creative skills. Students can also make the connections with the international key-pals. By meeting the international key-pals, the students can find out more about each other and their cultures, customs and so on. Building skills of writing and reading through the Internet can help students to feel released from an ordinary way of writing and reading.

The site can be a constructive tool where students can also improve their skills of writing, reading and they can build their vocabulary. The site can also build their *self-confidence* and *learners’ autonomy*.