There have been more tested delivered by computer since the 90s' like the Computer-based Test (CBT) TOFEL. One of the major drawback of CBT is that candidates have to be given chance to get familiar with the use of computer in the test setting and it will not be fair if candidates are not computer-literate ready for it.
Nevertheless, there are many advantages of CBT. Locations and time are not restricted provided candidates take CBT in designated centre with computers. Item setting, revision can be facilitated even done online when item setters and reviewers are not in the same place. Computer adaptive testing can be used to find out students' proficiency level in a way that computer can respond simultaneously to students' response and give appropriate level of items. Online DIALANG tool can even assess users' lanugage standard and allow them to opt for delayed feedback in a dozen of European languages.
It seems the use of CBT in Hong Kong lags behind counterparts in foreign countries and many stakeholders are quite skeptical about it. However, the prevailing trend of adopting CBT is on the wagon even in Hong Kong. Part of TSA marking has been done on screen.
Despite of the development of CBT, for high stake placement and public exams, to pay safe and ensure security, traditional paper and pencil format tests are more preferrable at this moment.
But for diagnotic purpose and self-learning, CBT platform with abundant item bank and instant feedback can help students brush up their language even outside classroom and enhance their motivation and learning autonomy. I hope more platform of this kind can be developed for students in Hong Kong.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Reflection Week 11: Learning Management Systems
This article points out some weaknesses of Learning Management Systems (LMS) including the limitation of interactive nature on learners, confusion among learners in early stage of using LMS, centrally controlled contents limiting learners' ecology, etc. However, LMS will benefit learners most in content-rich course. The author then suggests LMS to include fuctions like expansion to repond to learners, allowing sychronous collaboration, enabling connection between learners and content and allowing learners to explore in various areas of interest.
I agree with the author that no single tool can do all the best, especially LMS. The author stresses the importance of learning environment in a way that LMS can work comprementary with other tools like RSS, blogs, wikis, etc.
As such, I understand why we are encouraged to use so many CALL tools to assist in our learning in this course. Sticking to only one learning tool will only limit our connection with one type people in the field, while blogs and wikis can enable us to exhange our ideas with people in the field even overseas.
I agree with the author that no single tool can do all the best, especially LMS. The author stresses the importance of learning environment in a way that LMS can work comprementary with other tools like RSS, blogs, wikis, etc.
As such, I understand why we are encouraged to use so many CALL tools to assist in our learning in this course. Sticking to only one learning tool will only limit our connection with one type people in the field, while blogs and wikis can enable us to exhange our ideas with people in the field even overseas.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Week 10 Reflection: Learner Autonomy and Tandem Learning
The author first defined 3 pespectives on learner autonomy, namely individual-cognitive, social-interactive and experimental-participatory approach. These 3 aspects are well defined and comprehensive as they include major factors in language learners' interaction with oneself, peers and the tool.
The author then evaluated asynchronous and synchronous projects with view to the above perspectives. The ETR mail system (asynchronous communication) cited is very amazing. The most impressive function is that it can show corrections of a preceeding mail with new incoming mail below and at the same time showing reference tools on the left column. This can help learners reflect one's work and easily make reference in need.
Another example cited is the Tandem MOO project as synchronous communication tool. The author listed some limitations, but I think synchronous communication in form of MOO CMC is still a valuable tool in language learning.
We can improve such approach by asking students to engage in MOO synchronous communicatio with the teacher and peers or other L1 learners using ICQ or MSN. Of course, some tasks need to be given to them to somehow control and monitor their conversation, not letting conversation to go too loose and without focus. The "chained story" task is quite interesting, especially for senior primary and junior secondary students. Students will find synchronous CMC communication more interesteing as teenagers nowadays are too getting used to instant stimulus from environment and media. One constructive advice to learners is to ask them get their browser ready for online dictionary. In this way, the 3 kinds of autonomy can be satisfied, with self-reflection, peer interaction and tools in order.
However, autonomy is still not the same as motivation. For students really lack the mood and move to learn, I still wonder how we can use CMC and CALL to lure them to learn English.
The author then evaluated asynchronous and synchronous projects with view to the above perspectives. The ETR mail system (asynchronous communication) cited is very amazing. The most impressive function is that it can show corrections of a preceeding mail with new incoming mail below and at the same time showing reference tools on the left column. This can help learners reflect one's work and easily make reference in need.
Another example cited is the Tandem MOO project as synchronous communication tool. The author listed some limitations, but I think synchronous communication in form of MOO CMC is still a valuable tool in language learning.
We can improve such approach by asking students to engage in MOO synchronous communicatio with the teacher and peers or other L1 learners using ICQ or MSN. Of course, some tasks need to be given to them to somehow control and monitor their conversation, not letting conversation to go too loose and without focus. The "chained story" task is quite interesting, especially for senior primary and junior secondary students. Students will find synchronous CMC communication more interesteing as teenagers nowadays are too getting used to instant stimulus from environment and media. One constructive advice to learners is to ask them get their browser ready for online dictionary. In this way, the 3 kinds of autonomy can be satisfied, with self-reflection, peer interaction and tools in order.
However, autonomy is still not the same as motivation. For students really lack the mood and move to learn, I still wonder how we can use CMC and CALL to lure them to learn English.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Week 9 Reflection: Practical Considerations for Multimedia Courseware Development: An EFL IVD Experience
I think the time when this article written and the project done was around 90s'. However, judging from the CALL technology at that time, the design of the IVD courseware was quite innovative, attractive and successful. Learners could flexibly change the options of subtitles and make reference to explanations of vocabulary and idioms easily and quickly without the need to look them up in dictionary. Before viewing the video, learners could preview some background information. Even after viewing the video, there were exercise and related activities available in the courseware.
Amid the up-to-date technology now, I think there are some sort of similar IVD coursewares available even online. Provided that they are available online, its application in ESL classroom can be much enhanced without the need to install the programme into the laptop in the classroom.
I hope IVD designers could incorporate videos catering for the taste of young children and make IVD courswares on X-men, Spiderman i.e. more fashionable videos. Even such IVD courseware is not available, CALL interactive CALL ESL learning software on such topics can be great hits.
Amid the up-to-date technology now, I think there are some sort of similar IVD coursewares available even online. Provided that they are available online, its application in ESL classroom can be much enhanced without the need to install the programme into the laptop in the classroom.
I hope IVD designers could incorporate videos catering for the taste of young children and make IVD courswares on X-men, Spiderman i.e. more fashionable videos. Even such IVD courseware is not available, CALL interactive CALL ESL learning software on such topics can be great hits.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Week 8 Reflection: Amended Copyright Law
After reading the Amended Copyright Law, I found that actually the law is not so strict and there is exemption given to students and teachers so that learning and teaching are not severely prohibited. For example, teachers and students can still deal with "reasonable portions of copyright works" in a "fair manner" for teaching and learning in a specific course of study.
The law is quite fair and not biased or offending to academics as room is still given to students and teachers to utilise useful copyright resources in lesson. Of course, as what mentioned in the guide, a student who copies the whole textbook just because the original copyright work is expensive is liable to the offence of the law.
The law can protect the copyright of the author of the work, as well as work on the Internet and video formats. Nowadays, teaching aids are not just restricted to books and notes, interesting video clips or DVDs are common copyright materials frequently used in the classroom. The law can cater for the protection of the copyright and also allow flexibility in using them as teaching aid.
The law is quite fair and not biased or offending to academics as room is still given to students and teachers to utilise useful copyright resources in lesson. Of course, as what mentioned in the guide, a student who copies the whole textbook just because the original copyright work is expensive is liable to the offence of the law.
The law can protect the copyright of the author of the work, as well as work on the Internet and video formats. Nowadays, teaching aids are not just restricted to books and notes, interesting video clips or DVDs are common copyright materials frequently used in the classroom. The law can cater for the protection of the copyright and also allow flexibility in using them as teaching aid.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Group website project proposal
Proposal of Assignment 3 by Dora, Fiona, Paul and Venus
We are going to design a CALL website to assist our students in learning English as a second language. Since CALL has a lot of benefits such as arousing students’ interest and enhancing communication among learners, we hope the website designed can respond to the current CALL trend and enhance teaching and learning in real context.
All of us are teaching Key Stage 2 students in local primary schools. Three of us even teach in the same primary school. Many of our students are quite willing to learn English, but they lack adequate resources to enable them to further practice the four skills at home or after English lessons. Many of them can master basic skills but need further enhancement. The class web page can be a platform of resources we intend for our students to continue self-studies beside class time. Our focus is training their reading skills since past TSA results indicated students need reinforcement in this aspect. Moreover, reading plays an important role in language learning process. As suggested by EDB, we have to place around 40% of the lessons in reading in the new English curriculum.
It is important for us to choose readings which can align with the Key Stage 2 genre of texts in the new English curriculum. After thorough consideration, we decided to link our page to the Starfall website (http://www.starfall.com) as it includes a wide range of text types, such as plays, fiction and non-fiction, comics, folk tales, Greek myths and Chinese fables. These readings cannot only broaden our students’ horizon but also arouse their interest to engage in training of reading skills. In addition, the wide range of text types could fulfill different students’ needs as some of them like reading stories while some of them like reading nonfictions.
After reading the passages, students have to complete online quizzes. The questions will not simply ask students the meaning of the passages, they also need to pay attention on the pictures. Thus, while attempting the questions, students need to apply their comprehension skills, as well as their high order thinking skills which could help developing their reading techniques.
In order to make the texts more attractive, all the texts chosen are shown using Flash. Students could decide how many times they will listen to it and how long they will spend on it. There is no time limit and thus, if students have learning difficulties or those who read slowly, they don’t need to push themselves to read faster. Moreover, they could click the icons so that they could listen to the texts while reading it.
Meanwhile, a variety of activities will be provided to students. For instance, they might be asked to complete different tasks, such as filling in the blanks, answering MC questions, matching and cross puzzles. They are also invited to discuss or share what they have learnt in the guestbook. The idea of implementing a guestbook is that it could promote interactions not only between teacher and students, but also students to students.
We are going to design a CALL website to assist our students in learning English as a second language. Since CALL has a lot of benefits such as arousing students’ interest and enhancing communication among learners, we hope the website designed can respond to the current CALL trend and enhance teaching and learning in real context.
All of us are teaching Key Stage 2 students in local primary schools. Three of us even teach in the same primary school. Many of our students are quite willing to learn English, but they lack adequate resources to enable them to further practice the four skills at home or after English lessons. Many of them can master basic skills but need further enhancement. The class web page can be a platform of resources we intend for our students to continue self-studies beside class time. Our focus is training their reading skills since past TSA results indicated students need reinforcement in this aspect. Moreover, reading plays an important role in language learning process. As suggested by EDB, we have to place around 40% of the lessons in reading in the new English curriculum.
It is important for us to choose readings which can align with the Key Stage 2 genre of texts in the new English curriculum. After thorough consideration, we decided to link our page to the Starfall website (http://www.starfall.com) as it includes a wide range of text types, such as plays, fiction and non-fiction, comics, folk tales, Greek myths and Chinese fables. These readings cannot only broaden our students’ horizon but also arouse their interest to engage in training of reading skills. In addition, the wide range of text types could fulfill different students’ needs as some of them like reading stories while some of them like reading nonfictions.
After reading the passages, students have to complete online quizzes. The questions will not simply ask students the meaning of the passages, they also need to pay attention on the pictures. Thus, while attempting the questions, students need to apply their comprehension skills, as well as their high order thinking skills which could help developing their reading techniques.
In order to make the texts more attractive, all the texts chosen are shown using Flash. Students could decide how many times they will listen to it and how long they will spend on it. There is no time limit and thus, if students have learning difficulties or those who read slowly, they don’t need to push themselves to read faster. Moreover, they could click the icons so that they could listen to the texts while reading it.
Meanwhile, a variety of activities will be provided to students. For instance, they might be asked to complete different tasks, such as filling in the blanks, answering MC questions, matching and cross puzzles. They are also invited to discuss or share what they have learnt in the guestbook. The idea of implementing a guestbook is that it could promote interactions not only between teacher and students, but also students to students.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Our project page
Our group's project page is uploaded.https://eportal.cityu.edu.hk/bbcswebdav/courses/02EN6482/Group6/index.html
Week 6 Reflection: Theory-driven CALL and the Development Process
The reading first listed views of theorists about CALL design models: some emphasize comprehension-based; some argue for integrated framework; some opt for guide theory-driven CALL; some propose generic model. There are a lot of voices towards elements of design of CALL ranging from hierarchical and linear to the non-hierarchical and circular approach on handling elements in a framework; and the dicrete parts or procedural approach in development process of CALL programme. The author conducted a survey to ask for CALL practioners, who mostly are language teachers, about their view on how CALL theories affect the development of CALL materials.
Quite a lot of respondents preferred designing CALL matrial arising from the particular problem they like to solve; some respond to theoritical framework. There is a divide of view towards sequential or dicrete parts in the development process. On the whole, there is not a unified tendency of views.
Actually when I am thinking of applying a CALL programme in teaching, I usually refer to the needs of my students first. By the way, CALL has to serve the real teaching and learning context. I seldom choose CALL materials making reference to CALL theories. In designing CALL materials, I personally do not mind whether the process is in loop cycle, linear, sequential or not in any order. The utimate goal is to design really useful and applicable CALL material which can respond to the goal of the lesson. But I really admit that this article does raise some issues that teachers can pay attention to in the development process so that we will not miss out some important elements. For example, the role of media in the designing stage is very crucial, especially in this era. If we overlook it in the planning stage , we might need to fix it well and waste our effort in the development process.
Quite a lot of respondents preferred designing CALL matrial arising from the particular problem they like to solve; some respond to theoritical framework. There is a divide of view towards sequential or dicrete parts in the development process. On the whole, there is not a unified tendency of views.
Actually when I am thinking of applying a CALL programme in teaching, I usually refer to the needs of my students first. By the way, CALL has to serve the real teaching and learning context. I seldom choose CALL materials making reference to CALL theories. In designing CALL materials, I personally do not mind whether the process is in loop cycle, linear, sequential or not in any order. The utimate goal is to design really useful and applicable CALL material which can respond to the goal of the lesson. But I really admit that this article does raise some issues that teachers can pay attention to in the development process so that we will not miss out some important elements. For example, the role of media in the designing stage is very crucial, especially in this era. If we overlook it in the planning stage , we might need to fix it well and waste our effort in the development process.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Week 5 reading reflection: Language Learner behaviour in a virtual environment
Week 5 reading reflection:
The reading reveals a study showing that language learners do behave in ways different from normal classroom setting. Some extrovert will behave even more active, while some popular students would even be ignored just because he was late for the online task. It's important for teacher to be aware of such phenomenon because designing CALL activities of this type online is very different from normal setting. Things always happen unexpectedly. The long negotiation time for students in the study to successfully guess the identity of each other may be due to the first attempt of such activities.
I gave my ICQ and email address to my students this year and graduates several years ago. I found that they are willing to talk to me online using English, but usually they don't take the initiative to talk more and in depth in English. They are often saying about some rountines like "having dinner" or "watching TV" and the most common response by some weak students is "Are you happy?". I guess, maybe, they are still primary students. They may lack enough proficiency to engage in more meaninngful online conversation.
I also noticed that in such online conversations, they are brave enough and tend to use more Chinglish (they do not dare to do so in my class normally). What will you do if your students do so? I usually allow them when they are talking online. It's far more important to arouse their interest to use English to talk, even just online.
The reading reveals a study showing that language learners do behave in ways different from normal classroom setting. Some extrovert will behave even more active, while some popular students would even be ignored just because he was late for the online task. It's important for teacher to be aware of such phenomenon because designing CALL activities of this type online is very different from normal setting. Things always happen unexpectedly. The long negotiation time for students in the study to successfully guess the identity of each other may be due to the first attempt of such activities.
I gave my ICQ and email address to my students this year and graduates several years ago. I found that they are willing to talk to me online using English, but usually they don't take the initiative to talk more and in depth in English. They are often saying about some rountines like "having dinner" or "watching TV" and the most common response by some weak students is "Are you happy?". I guess, maybe, they are still primary students. They may lack enough proficiency to engage in more meaninngful online conversation.
I also noticed that in such online conversations, they are brave enough and tend to use more Chinglish (they do not dare to do so in my class normally). What will you do if your students do so? I usually allow them when they are talking online. It's far more important to arouse their interest to use English to talk, even just online.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
It's freezing
It's freezing, below 10 deg C. I hate cold weather, but I still have to work next week before public holidays.
My groupmates are Dora, Venus and Fiona.
The website we are evaluating is Bitesize Primary
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesizeprimary/
It's an English learning website for primary students.
We are adopting the Integrated Framework for evaluating CALL courseware proposed by Hubbard and adjusting the framework into our criteria which suit our context.
For more details, please refer to Dora's blog.
http://dorayyl.blogspot.com/
Please give comments to us. Thanks
The website we are evaluating is Bitesize Primary
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesizeprimary/
It's an English learning website for primary students.
We are adopting the Integrated Framework for evaluating CALL courseware proposed by Hubbard and adjusting the framework into our criteria which suit our context.
For more details, please refer to Dora's blog.
http://dorayyl.blogspot.com/
Please give comments to us. Thanks
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Week 3 reading reflection
The parts I'm reading are all about real practices and examples of website assisted learning integrated with skills in learning English, using English to communicate or other generic skills such as collaborations. First, the examples are authentic and are all valuable since they gave good illustrations of how Teaching English as a Second Language teachers can motiviate students to apply English in real situations in daily life using websites.
Having read these parts, I found that the most crucial key to success in these real example is the element of setting students a realistic goal to archieve and the sense of ownership. The website and the Internet can provide an interactive platform for students to publish and edit their production. And the most important thing is that, once students in the examples knew their work is to be published and scrutined on the web, they were all very autonomously responsible for the quality of their work and took every initiative to make sure they were sound and perfect. They couldn't lost their face publicly. I think the Net has played a great role by motivating them to engage in active production related to a real context.
I think such apporoach can be adopted in Hong Kong classroooms, but the most worrying concern is that there may not be enough time to pack such ambitious online project into a already tight syllabus in Hong Kong schools. I think the curriculum teachers and English panel chairpersons and English teachers should consider putting more of these elements into curriculum in Hong Kong and see how these can be implemented in a feasible way.
Having read these parts, I found that the most crucial key to success in these real example is the element of setting students a realistic goal to archieve and the sense of ownership. The website and the Internet can provide an interactive platform for students to publish and edit their production. And the most important thing is that, once students in the examples knew their work is to be published and scrutined on the web, they were all very autonomously responsible for the quality of their work and took every initiative to make sure they were sound and perfect. They couldn't lost their face publicly. I think the Net has played a great role by motivating them to engage in active production related to a real context.
I think such apporoach can be adopted in Hong Kong classroooms, but the most worrying concern is that there may not be enough time to pack such ambitious online project into a already tight syllabus in Hong Kong schools. I think the curriculum teachers and English panel chairpersons and English teachers should consider putting more of these elements into curriculum in Hong Kong and see how these can be implemented in a feasible way.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Oaps
Previously, I thought this week's reflection is to be finished in discussion board. Only now I know it should be done here.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
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