You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives. ~Clay P. Bedford
The
third week for me was a very busy week. I were busy on completing all the
assignments of second's and third's week. While talking about the third week's
assignments, we had three assignments: creating delicious page, Oral/Aural
skill building discussion and at last project work step two. www.delicious.com is a site where we can
add many link of the websites. For me, it is very helpful as I were worried of bookmarking things. I couldn't
remember important websites for the long time. That's why, I would add those
websites whether in my favorite page or pin to start but it would make my
Laptop slow. So, delicious site is worthy for me, I learnt important and new
things.
Then, in the next step we had
discussion on oral/aural skill building. It was about reading the articles
about CALL for listening, speaking and pronunciation skills. I read two
articles "The pedagogy-technology interface in Computer Assisted
Pronunciation Training" by A. Neri, C. Cucchiarini, H. Strik, L. Boves and
"Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" by Lindsay
Miller. The first article examines the relationship between pedagogy and
technology in computer assisted Pronunciation Training, its limitations and
some recommendations. I like the way this article propose of practicing CAPT
through Input, output, and feedback. It is obvious that the more we get input
the more we learn. The more we are competent the more we feel easy for the
output. And definitely feedback is the most of making our learning effective
and to be competent in our area. In my view, CAPT helps to learn in a private
and stress free environment where pupils can practice as many time as they
want. It is accessible for unlimited input. The Students get feedback by ASR
and improve next time as this article believes. It is one of the most important
way of improving pronunciation of non-native speakers as they face many
problems in giving stress, intonation and pronunciation.
The second article "Developing
Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" by Lindsay Miller is one very
important article. I felt like I share it with my friends who are conducting
research on listening. It would be great source for their literature review. It
is true that if we go for the literature on listening, we can rarely find it.
Very few researches have been done in this field. In my country, especially
secondary level students are week in listening test. They don't practice
listening skills in their classroom. Teachers seem not aware of its importance.
Very few workshops and trainings address the issues of listening. According to
Millar (2003) "It is indeed interesting that listening has not received
wider attention in the past given that it is the language skill most often used
in everyday life. In further discussion, more than forty percent of our daily
communication time is spent on listening, thirty-five percent on speaking,
sixteen percent on reading, and only nine percent on writing (Burely-Allen 1995
as cited in Miller, 2003)". It shows that how important is listening in
our life but why is it neglected?
In the same way, as a third
assignment we had to read one sample project report and comment on that report
in nicenet. I found all reports useful for us to understand the
situation of different countries. Among the articles, I chose the article of
Prem Phyak because it was a report of Nepal. I'm grown up facing the same
problems as Mr. Phayak said in his report; problems of load shedding, no easily
accessible of Internet, huge numbers of students, lecture methods of teaching
learning etc. The overarching goal of this research was to help students
develop their academic writing and research skills. It includes: identifying
research problem, specifying a research topic, identifying and reviewing the
literature, designing appropriate research methodology and tools, collecting
and analyzing data, writing a thesis and preparing bibliography. Likewise, the
specific goals of this research was going through various websites, reading the
articles and review them , reading the chapter on research design method, going
through the readings from different websites he has included in his report,
reading APA style at noodle Tools. To address the goals of the above objectives
different websites are necessary which we can find in his report. First of all
he surveyed the students need and conducted the focus group discussion before
designing the course. Based on survey he designed research questions which are
as follows:
How to help students to access more
resources for their research?
Why do they always ask for research
topic to the supervisor but do not fix themselves?
Why are they not able to find and review
the literature related to their study?
Why they are not motivated to explore
more materials for their research?
How can they improve their academic writing
and research skills?
At
first, he shared the course with the students (20 students under his
supervision, 5 of them were in-service teachers, among 15, only 11 students
were doing their research work, other 4 students had deferred for the next
term). He suggested them to open an e-mail ID either in Google or yahoo. He
also taught them how to do it in the classroom by using wireless internet
(using modem) for those who did not have e-mail yet. He would meet with
students twice a week to review their progresses and for the further plan.
Slowly, he taught them to create blog, to update the blog and introduced many
useful websites. At the end of the research, he analyzed the outcomes from students'
responses and from his reflections. Below are his findings:
Technology
used by students: Most of the students started to use
email, Google and some started updating the blog of their reflection and
started to search ELT related sites.
Usefulness of technology for learning and teaching: Students believed that
there are many advantages of technology.
Technology for research skill: All students agreed that
technology helps to develop their research skill and started to surf related
websites.
Technology for academic writing skill: Phayak that they are doing
better in their academic writing.
Changes made: Previously students would feel difficulty following
his instruction but at the last of the research they started being familiar
with Internet. Some students started blogging, surfing related websites,
started to use mail id etc.
In
the country like mine only learning to use mail id is also enough for some
teachers. I'm blessed with the effort of Mr. Phayak; he contributed a lot for
the progression of technology in my country.
He
did for twenty ELT Practitioners. Those twenty may do for other twenty. In this
way our county may go ahead in technology. One true reality; it was the case of
2010 but after 3 years now in 2013 I think 60% of the village teachers are also
aware of such technology because many projects has been implemented in this
regarding field. They have a slogan of "A laptop per students" and
they are doing well too. They are distributing computers in schools of village.
This is one positive aspect to develop technology in my country. I like the
research report of Phayak which is very interesting to read, knowledgeable (I
got to know many new websites which I wouldn't use) and contextual as well. But
he has addressed the objectives of 1, 2 and 6 number. I felt like it would be
better and more effective if he had addressed all the objectives of research.
In
this way, we came at the end of the third week.
Thank you.
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In
my class the problems was on motivation of the learners. In my view, lack of
the motivation in using technology inside the classroom is little knowledge on
how to use it and not favorable environment at home as well not good access at
school. There is a culture in my country
that students feel, only assignments of course book should be done, they are
not habitual in this type of creative writing things. Therefore, they don't write
and post in their blog and seems blogging project is not running smoothly. For
solving the above problems, first of all awareness rising is important to the
stakeholders. If stakeholders are aware in the importance of technology they
provide favorable environment inside the classroom and at home. Then, each and
every day students get lots of input and exposure and obviously, it will make
them competent in using internet. It is one of the sources of motivation in
students. Then, for the next problem solution can be providing reward, showing
the values of its importance by teacher. Here, reward doesn't mean giving
tangible things; it can be encouragement and affirmation.
