From the readings for Oct. 1

This week's chapter reminds me of the lesson with an American instructor which I took when I was an undergrad freshman. He had us call to his phone and record a message on his answering machine. Although we did not do as far as the example in p.106, he still asked to make a real message or a message which sound real. So, I left this message "Hey Chris, I am wondering if you are going to give my money back. In short… WHERE IS MY MONEY?!! Call me back as soon as you get this message. OK?" He told me that he had been laughing when he listened the message. And he also suggested me that I should not scare people when I want somebody call back. Very true…

Anyways, the above …I was just playing with blogging. One of the things that inspired me was the section "summarize lectures or programs" (pp.106). What this made me come up with was using a type of English lesson programs which appeared recently in Japan. One example is a program showing the beginners and intermediate level ESL course at the University of Columbia. The name of this program is "Real English from New York." Until recently, English lesson TV programs are always performed by one native English speaker and a few Japanese (one of them is usually very good at English: English teacher, university professor, simultaneous translator, and other Japanese are very very beginners and they seem to be made to make many embarrassing mistakes…). Although some of the programs are helpful, explanation is always given both in English and Japanese. However, the new type of programs only shows the ESL lessons which are really taken place and recorded in a given school (U of C in the previous example). Those programs go only in English.

Getting back to what I was talking, the section (p. 106) reminds me of this TV program and I thought if I could find an appropriate lesson for my students, I could have students watch a real ESL lesson, take notes, and summarize what they leaned there. Chances are that students will like the program and they keep watching the program at home afterward.

This is rather long, but let me say one more thing. I stopped somewhere for a while during my reading. In p. 109, the author lists the pedagogical rationale for "Scenes from TV or Film activity." The last one of the list says "a scene taken from an obscure work might expose students to something that they normally wouldn't see, such as a classic, art house, or independent film." I am wondering if something that is rarely going to happen to learners' real life is worth while teaching…

What I learned this week

The discussion about the web evaluation gave me a new perspective of considering a lesson. When we consider the quality of a lesson, do you think it is always ideal to integrate all the four skills? Or do you think it depends on the objectives of the lesson? I am for the latter. I do not believe that a lesson has to integrate all of them. I know it is good if we have them effectively, but if we construct or modify the lesson for the sake of including all the four skills, I suspect it is the wrong way to think about the lesson. My philosophy is "do not look away from your target although something looks tempting." There is always something attractive which could distract you from focusing on goals, especially when you are in technology world.

 

From the readings for Sep. 24

The national standard, provided by LeLoup and Ponterio as Appendix A, was discussed in the summer of Topic in TESL (EFL) as well. I believe it supplies us with better guides for EFL teaching than ESL standards. However, although we can attempt to meet them, I see the limitation of "Cultures" taking into account the EFL unique contexts. As you know, knowing or having experience does not necessarily mean being able to teach. I have no idea how we can teach culture even after we had some discussion about this in summer. If I am to teach culture as a non-NEST, I will have to overcome tons of difficulties… Additionally, what aspect of culture do we need to teach? I guess something that might interfere with the communication with people from different culture (especially from target cultures). But what interferes with communication? Is it possible to define what aspect of culture should be taught through foreign language teaching?

I associate the articles of Bandle's with LeLop & Ponterio's in terms of preparation. Bandle introduces the danger of hyperlinks in the Internet authentic texts for students to drown in too much amount of information. On the other hand, LeLop and Ponterio recommend that teachers prepare students well for exposure to authentic texts in order not to overwhelm, frustrate, and let them develop irreversible negative attitude toward working with authentic materials. This connection makes me think that we have to consider not only how to make the best use of technology but also how to let them have positive attitude toward authentic language activity. It is teachers' responsibility, I believe, for providing students joyful experience in interacting with authentic materials.

What I learned on Sep. 17.

Thanks to Chris, I learned how to use Picasa for editing photographs. However, to be honest, I learned Spanish more than the software this time. Bien bien. Just kidding.

I was glad to have a discussion and being away from the computer for a while because I felt like I was in a face-to-face class by seeing everyone's faces and even smiles.

One thing I came up with during class is:

Someone told me before that computer is not the thing to learn by reading a manual from the beginning to the end. He continued that it was time for you to learn computer when you need to use it.

He basically meant that you would learn how to use software while using it and exploring it. So, for either Picasa or Trackstar, I realized how important "teacher's hat" is; to connect what I learned about CALL to my own context or my interests is the key to enhancing my ability in this field which will help me survive in this course! Otherwise, whenever I am introduced a good technology, I would forget what I learned.

Adios!

first try

!!

Music and Writing

I just came up with one more thing to write on the article about music. As Karina mentioned in her own blog, it is important to figure out students' taste in music. Then I thought there might be some people who did not like music. Furthermore, as a guitarist, I am fond of instrumental music mainly played with the guitar. How can we deal with students with the same taste as mine? I obtain some feeling even though the music does not have lyrics; some cheer me up, others make me think or remind me of something. I consider this natural because there are a number of famous genres of music that do not have lyrics, and people who like such music DO gain some emotions out of it. Therefore, since this type of music causes an emotional change, I suppose it is possible to have students write what they feel after they listen to instrumental music. Is it difficult?

From the readings for Sep. 17

The article by Oishi is very interesting to me. As for the utilization of online video, NBC.com or ABC.com has links to full episodes of TV shows. Although I do not know many, I am certain that there are much more web sites where we can watch TV show. If we use several minutes of a TV show, we can provide students with authentic English very easily (but my concern is if these links are available in outside of US; I tried to watch the second season of "Heroes" this summer from Japan, just for fun, it did not work there.). Additionally, when you watch some TV show via the Internet, there is commercial advertisements. Even though this is annoying for watching TV shows, these advertisements can be a excellent materials; there are many funny ones!!

As for the chapter of Kanel, I really like the activity with music. I will tell you a good tool (web site) where you can obtain any kind of rhythm. But not now, I have to hold it until the week I have to give one website.

What I learned on Sep. 10

I have to confess that I had been stressed out to finish all the assignments for this day. It took me 4 days to finish the readings, answer the questions from the articles, write a letter, and make comments for group members. Another thing that I have to confess is that I had already forgotten most things I obtained from the readings when we had the class. This is why I had no "up" to share with my classmates. The HD of my brain was overloaded.

It was a bit hard to have a conversation through Skype with 2 people on one laptop because the speakers in my laptop are not loud enough. I thought that it is important to have a good set of hardware.

During the group discussion for the articles, the only thing I could remember was case study #3. However, this is the idea which I am really fond of. Giving students the model of oral presentation is excellent idea because showing the goal / what their product should look like matches my teaching style. I found this case applicable to my teaching context.

From the readings for Sep. 10

The Chapter by Chapelle is so interesting to me that I would like write about it. Of the three researches introduced there, the second one conducted by Comton strikes me because the relationship between writing and speaking is one of the things I am eager to know. Not only did the feature of ICQ surprise me, but also her idea that combines text-chat and oral presentation impressed me. Even though she did not reach the significant conclusion, I saw potentials of text-chat in connecting writing and speaking. However, since the number of participants is limited and this research is mainly normative approach, I was interested in reading interpretative research on this topic if available (e.g., interviewing a number of participants and ask what they think of the use of text-chat for improving their writing and also "speaking" proficiency, etc.).

Additionally, the parameter used in this research "willingness to communicate" seems very important in my teaching context (high school in Japan), for they are usually reluctant to speak up because as Comton mentions "[t]heir reluctance was due to anxiety and lack of confidence as they were afraid that their attempts to speak in English would be seen as stupid or dumb" (p.198).

What I learned on Sep. 3

In this session we discussed digital native/immigrant, Network-based language teaching, and the article about when to use technology. In our group, we could not come up with any excellent idea on any of this topic, but we realized that the style the article affects our reading, especially attitude or motivation for the reading. If an article is written in a magazine style with some pictures, it will help us to relax and feel less stress to keep up with the content. When the discussion was shared with the whole class, we found some of the classmates preferred to read articles on screen. It was so interesting a fact to me since I always printed out whatever the materials are. For the articles of Activity #1, I tried to read on screen, and it was very tiring and I felt like the screen damaged my eyes…

Getting back to the topics in class, we also worked on GoogleDoc which was not familiar to me at all. Although I haven't seen how it will help my language teaching yet, it seems useful if I try to utilize it for writing courses (e.g., peer-reviewing/editing, collaborative writing, project related to writing, etc.). It seems that GoogleDoc is easier to utilize for these writing activities than Wiki, but I should consider those potentials further.