Words to the New Technology Group.

Time flies! Another course's going to be done! I am now missing the lecture and other classmates even though it is so exhausting to be concentrated for another 3 hours after working for long hours. A thousand thanks to Chirs for being always so helpful and my dearest group members. I miss the time when we worked together for the project. It is blessful to meet you all.

Reflection on Week 7 Reading

Although the project using a foreign language Interactive Videodisc Courseware was done in Taiwan, where students learn English as a Foreign Language, I think the findings have important teaching implications in Hong Kong, too. IVD may be especially helpful to university students graduating from CMI secondary school.

As the writer points out, IVD provides the messages on realistic life, visual support and demonstrate how language are used in a great variety of contexts. IVD is more entertaining. All these elements make IVD more attractive and impressive than the printed version.

Learners will also be able to pick up the accent, intonation and stress from the IVD materials.

Reference
Hsien-Chin Liou

Another 'Susan Boyle' from Taiwan

A latest rising star from a Taiwan Talent show. As shown in the the following video, he can't even handle with daily conversation but he has perfect pronuniciation when he sings. That stimulate and encourage us, teachers, not to give up our kids. There's a way for them to enjoy learning English when English learning is part of their interests and hobbies. As what he says, 'there's a reason for everybody's existence in this world and the best way to get back to them is to be more successful'.

Justin Bieber

The latest hit among teenagers. A youtube sensation who makes my girls screaming and my boys keeping talking about him in the spare time.

Even the weak achievers in the English class manage to sing his one less lonely girl.

Justin Bieber and Usher in Ellen Show



Justin Bieber One Less Lonely Girl


Justin Bieber Baby

Hotpotatoes

With the Hotpotatoes, teachers can design a range of online tasks such as matching exercises, MC questions, Fill in the blanks and so on. The online exercies boost learners' autonomy and foster independent self learning. Teaching and learning becomes more efficient since learners can get immediate hints and feedback and assessment results from the computer.

As we all know, students are exposed to an explosively large amount of information through the internet. There is so much information that learners may feel lost and confused. What matters most is how to guide students to process appropriate materials. Hotpatoes exercises will help to scaffold students with proper language input. They will guide students to select suitable online materials for the more interactive task such as blogging. Hotpotatoes exercises are especially important for young learners to prevent that learners may be scared away from the highly difficult authentic online materials.

How Blogging Helps to Teach Writing - A Review on the Writing Task from Our Group Project

From the previous activities, students have learned vocabulary to describe and comment on food. They have also picked up the comparative and superlative structure, which are essentially important for a good review.

This short writing task is interactive and student-centred. They need to use the vocabulary and sentence pattern they have learned to write a review on their favouite restaurant. The guided questions are provided to help the weak learners.

Wikis pages have been set up for every student named according to their class number. They need to locate their wikis page before they rename the page with their class number, names and the name of their own restaurant. Except the language output, students are encouraged to upload photos, insert links of the webpages about the restaurant in their review so that their classmates can explore more about the restaurant browsing the internet. In this way, authentic online materials are integrated into the peer learning process. Online materials chosen and recommended by their classmates are better than those by the teacher because teachers may select materials far beyond students’ comprehension level.

The forum also provides an interactive platform by allowing students to reply to other learners’ reviews.

Modifying our group project

As for the group project, I am the one to design the last writing task where students need to produce an 80-word review and comment on their classmates' reviews. We need to establish a platform for students to interact with each other online. Originally, we plan to ask students to write their reviews in teh comment box and leave their names in the end. It involves fewer technologies. But it is quite messy for both teachers and learners to locate a specific review. According to the integrative CALL, Learners should learn both the language and technologies at the same time. Therefore, our group decided to set up a specific page for each participant. The outcome consists not only the 80-word review and two 30-word responses and a viewer-friendly webpage. All the three components are to be marked.