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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
