The PODCAST I recommend .

ESLPOD

  

  In the process of learning English or any language, the very basic and initial phase is listening. Furthermore learners imitate the sound, speaking the language comes out the next stage. In Asia, school often focuses too much on preparing students to take part in tests; therefore, most of students I met before were good at reading as well as writing, but not the basic skills such as listening as well as speaking.

  Here is a very useful material on line to provide teachers and students to practice their listening skills. It is ESL podcast blog. The advantages of this podcast are the speed of the speaker, the various materials, and the detailed elaboration from the speaker. Teachers can broadcast those podcasts online to the whole class and ask students to dictate the lines that speaker says.

In addition, students can pick up many idioms, slangs, and vocabulary by listening to the materials. The textbooks can be updated like the materials online. Sometimes, textbooks can still provide students the old fashion idioms or slangs. ESL podcast might solve this sort of problem, and teachers can use this kind of updated websites to increase students’ knowledge.

Here are the phrases and vocabulary I wrote down for my students to learn.

   

No way- absolutely not

Out of my league- sb/sth is too good or of high quality that you don’t feel that you are worth it

Have nothing on you- you’re as good as the person, that person has no advantages over you

Confidence- the feeling that you are able to do something

Throw sth away- put it in the trash, dispose it

Out of the blue- unexpectedly, without warning

Creep- the same as a jerk, negative way of describe sb, behave in unlikable way

Bold- to show the ability to take risks, not to be fearful

Stole, steal- take sth that isn’t yours

To admire sb- to like sb very much, to respect sb very much, doesn’t have a romantic meaning, you can also look up to people like your father or a president.

Afar- at a distance, far away

Ask sb out- ask sb to go out for a romantic date

Come of as- make other people believe a certain thing, to see you in a certain way

Eat it up- to accept sth eagerly

No guts, no glory- if you don’t take any risks, you wont gain anything.

No pain, no gain- in order to get sth good, you often have to go through some pain.  

The source is from SUNDAY - NOVEMBER 27, 2011 of ESL podcast

  

EPals Schoolmails

EPals

  EPals offers a safe way for students, especially from K to 12, a safe environment to use e-mails. Besides the quick language translation, EPals provides students to write e-mails to other students who are in other communities, schools, and countries. One teacher recorded a video in EPals website and mentioned that EPals furnishes students opportunities to communicate with students from other areas. The teacher, Antella O’Brian, indicates that her students have the real contact to the authentic materials with American kids as they are learning American culture.  In addition, for the security concern, teachers can monitor students e-mail to ensure they go on the right track to use the Internet.

  EPals also pffers on-line space for teachers to upload and download their teaching projects to share with other teachers from all over the world. For me, it’s like a brainstorming for the teaching materials. Each teacher has his/ her own stereotype of individual topic and one good way to shun the traps of teachers’ stereotypes is to check what other teachers’ opinions are and how do they present their materials. 

Step outdoors and gain adventures now!

Rolling on the road

Check out my digital story!

Students are having more and more stress as they are learning. Encouraging them to step outdoors is a good way to help them relax and refresh themselves by Mother Nature.

Personally, I like to  go biking. It does not matter I go with friends or by myself. The point is I expose myself in the natural environment but not staying in the library for whole day. Through biking, I make friends, get familiar with the place as well as the culture belonging, and also I gain health.

Life is more than having fun but grades. I would like my students to revalue their way to treat the nature of life (Taiwanese students have heavy pressure to pass exams to get into good schools in every stage of their life).

Through my own stories and personality, I want to teach my students the things not only in textbooks but also the value of life itself.

How nuch do you know?

Here is my storybook!


:: PIMPAMPUM :: Bubblr! .:.

I would like to apply this digital book for my students to intruduce them fairy tales from western culture.

Culture is always connected to second language learning. For young leaners, it is a good way to present them engaging stories with cultural things.

The premise of using this digital stroybook is that learners ahve already have few background knowledge about those fairy tale characters. Otherwise, those characters in this digital book will be more confusing to learners.

This can be a beneficial digital book for me to review maybe at the end of the semester for my students to review every story I have introduced them during the semester.

Digital Storytelling: A bridge from nontechnical world to the technical one

Digital Storytelling:  A bridge from nontechnical world to the technical one

 Digital storytelling is like audio books with animation. Creators can edit it with sound, photos, video clips, or maybe their own artifacts to demonstrate any story, thought, and history with as much as information he/she wants to contribute to the audiences.  “The wonderful thing about storytelling is that students and teachers can create their own time machine by searching for interesting images, audio, and video clips on the web.” (Digital storytelling from University of Houston) This is not only a teaching tool but also a great tool to provide opportunities for students to practice, collaborate, and explore on a certain topic.

                                                    http://digitalstorytelling.coe.uh.edu/

There is a center for training people to take part in digital storytelling. The nonprofit center offer training chances to people all over the world among every generation. Boosting digital storytelling can connect to the community as well as people from different corners around the world. Creators record meaningful stories to express their emotion or just simply to display their life. All kinds of materials can be covered by digital storytelling.

                                                      http://www.storycenter.org/index1.html

Digital storytelling is like audio books with animation. Creators can edit it with sound, photos, video clips, or maybe their own artifacts to demonstrate any story, thought, and history with as much as information he/she wants to contribute to the audiences. Digital storytelling allow students and teachers to deeply explore  various themes. By working together either among teachers and students or merely among students, digital storytelling can build up their relationship in every aspect.

7 things you should know about digital storytelling:

 http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7021.pdf

Classroom Incentives for Games

Classroom Incentives for Games (see the reference)

Last blog article, we talked about the components of making good learning games. Now, let’s discuss the useful incentives for learners’ involvement.

C  Candy Prizes

Rewarding learners with different kinds, colors, shapes, or various flavors of candy is a powerful allurement when they answer the correct answers in the class. The things need to be checked before employing this award in the class are to investigate learners history of food allergy and the permission from parents.

Extra Credit

This incentive is especially for playing learning games in the class. The way to count the extra points can be personally or with a whole group. The point of extra credit is to call different students to answer the task based questions for offering more opportunities of expressing and practicing in the class.

Pizza Party

Pizza parties are appropriate to reviewing the whole lesson information at the end of the lesson day. Students need to comprehend the main points of the lesson and answer the challenging questions from teachers by not missing too many mistaken answers to gain their pizza parties as their praises. This can also be used to compete with other class in school to arouse the sense of cooperation by learning.

Movie Day

This method of reward can be used for the whole class participation. The tips of choosing the movies are according to learners’ age, interests, and the mortal of the story. Students are allowed to bring snakes and drinks to share in the class.

What Makes a Good Learning Game?
Going beyond edutainment

By Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen / February 2011

The preference article

This article discusses the factors to make games good games. The three msin factors are integration, motivation, and focus. 

When teachers are playing games in the class, they need to make sure that learning and playing are integrated into the games. 

Moreover, it is teachers’ responsibility to design the learning games intriguing and engaging. 

Furthermore, the games are required to be challenging to learners. These elements in learning games are good motivation to trigger the learners to involve the games more. 

The final component of a good learning game is focus. Players can focus on learning experience by collecting, discovering, and performing the games together.

Teachers can apply those factors as a reminder to exam their own designing games and also evaluate learners’ reaction and interaction in the class to check up how success the games are. In addition, the article states the ways to distinguish games and learning by substantives and verbs. Other facets of good games include a systematic rules for learners to follow. “When we design learning games we should therefore be very focused on how the rules in the games works, because they define the core of the game experience, and ultimately the primary learning results.” (Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen)

    

The function of learners' social network.

 

  Teaching and Learning through Social Networks 
  When it comes to the new trend of teaching method, learning technologies are always categorized into the new current. As a “modern” teacher, it is the must to understand the value of the social networking of teaching and learning. More and more young English learners tend to chase the technology to learn English.  

  In 2007, the British Council conducted market research into how the Internet has affected the preferred learning styles of young people wanting to learn English around the world. The result shows that more than half of English learners believe applying the Internet as a learning technology is more efficient and complete. Also, the social networking including learners’ friends as well as family. They are the essential factors to assist learners of learning besides the value of the Internet.

  Sometimes, social networking refers to the group projects in the class. The collaboration among learners  might improve their abilities as well.

  Smart phones are popular among young learners, too. Teachers can take smart phones as a good path to their learning area. Not all the knowledge is from our textbooks. Learners can reach the outside world and information by their daily using smart phones. The way to learn can meet their needs and interesting.

  A firm social network represents a better academic performance of learners. The hints for teachers to notice are paying more attention on the social network of every individual, teaching learners the appropriate means to access the outside information, and developing their social skills.

 

How do we deal with KNOWLEDGE?

  Before the knowledge grew dramatically, people pursue their jobs after schooling. Also the field of knowledge was counted in a long periods. Now, knowledge evolves rapidly. Many new fields come out within few years or even few months. The recent learning trend is impressive to me. It mentions “Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same. ” I totally agree with this point in many aspects. First, gaining knowledge is accessible action with the Internet nowadays. It’s easy to be eliminated in the work places if one is not eager to refill him/herself more information and ability related to the career. Moreover, gaining knowledge is through the individual’s practical experience. By conducting more practice associated to the job, the individual can earn more to assist his or her job.

Behaviorism

• Observable behaviour is more important than understanding internal activities.
• Behaviour should be focused on simple elements: specific stimuli and responses.
• Learning is about behaviour change.

Cognitivism

·         Learning is the process of knowledge input.

• The input knowledge turns into short-term memory.
• The sort-term memory then goes into long-term recall

Constructivism

·         Learners chase to gain knowledge when they need to comprehend their experiences.

·         Learners pursue the knowledge by creating their own meaning.

·         The real-life learning is messy and complicated.

  According to the video, it asserts that the network itself is the learning. The way people connect to other people reflects the individuals’ capability to persist to leave in the same stage. People need to socialize themselves by chatting with the people around them or deploy private speech to communicate with the intimacy. Besides just talking to people around us, we can also apply the technology as the tool to keep in touch with others such as e-mail  or a phone call. The network people create around them including coworkers, family, friends or anyone as the members in the individual’s network. The value of the network makes the new information transmits easily in the network than the period without technology. Take Google reader as an example. People set up their specific reader network to gain new information form others which are in their network and the new piece of information spread in this network in a rapid speed making the new knowledge grow exponentially. I like this idea since I just started to employ the new tool such as blogger and Google reader recently.
Referneces:
Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age (George Siemens)

The Network is the learning.

 

Don't worry about your pronunciation

Spoken English Blog

I like this blog because it brought out a good point of learning English or the same concept of learning the second language. It is being confident to speak every word. So true that we are all afraid to make mistakes in front of the public but making mistakes is reasonable, no matter you are the native speakers are the language learners. Sometimes, teachers focus too much on checking students pronunciation and forget about that the function of language is to communicate results in learners hold no confidence to say the language out. Teachers should encourage the learners to practice more and give them suggestion not correction.

Besides teachers in the class help learners  moreover the Internet is helping , too. I like to use dictionary.com as my learning tool. There are IPA and the actual pronunciation on Dictionary .com. It is really useful  when I need to know the pronunciation without teachers’ assistance.

The Linguist on Language

Furthermore, I want to introduce another website called “The Linguist on Language.” It’s an intriguing blog with many videos shoot by the blogger himself. It is clearer to know his concepts  by reading and listening than only the blog has the reading articles.  

How often do you browse the Internet?

The Internet started being widely in 1995. 1 out of 8 couples got married in the US in 2005 and in Taiwan as well. Undeniably, this is a new trend in the world for this generation, next generation, and even the last generation such as my parents; the Internet cannot be divided by everyone nowadays.

Teachers should take account of this new trend to apply to the classroom and cater their interests to boost their learning motivation.

Check this video:
Did you know?


Check this website:
Internet Dating

SLA and technology

SLA and technology

We all know that learning the second language takes many hours and effort in our life and also creating the language learning environment is crucial to the learners. In my personal learning experience, I love to use the technology to learn second language. Technology is the tool that human develops to meet the world’s needs nowadays. Applying the technology in SLA helps people to gain the latest knowledge and generates the interactive learning without the restriction of the distance. For the next generation, technology such as the Internet is not only the helpful toll in SLA but also the preferred tool. Teachers can take the advantage of the Internet to arouse the interests of students’ learning motivations.

Three ways teachers can use blog in the class

1. Answering questions:
 In a similar strategy to the aforementioned information gathering, some educators streamline the process by   allowing students to answer questions via Twitter rather than raising their hands. This greatly aids studying, too, as they can easily refer back via dedicated classroom hashtags.

2. Enable discussion outside of the class:
 University of Texas emerging media professor David Parry also talked Twitter with Mashable, lauding the ubiquitous microblog as an excellent way for his students to continue class discussions after they’ve already ended. And they frequently do!

3. Share a story:
 Put a social media twist on an old classroom favorite by asking students to play some fun story-go-round games on the famous microblogging site. The first tweets a sentence, the next builds off of it and so forth; try assigning a hashtag to make reading everything faster.

My reference page:
http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2011/07/06/28-creative-ways-teachers-are-using-twitter/