Week 4: Reflections

This week we have had four assignments:

1- Discussing the Impact of Technology on improving Reading and Writing skills:

A) Reading Articles
The reading articles this week have been interesting as usual. On Nicenet, where our course discussions are taking place, I summarized and commented on some points in Jarek Krajka's article on Using the Internet in ESL Writing Instruction.

One issue raised in this article is that writing on a blog puts students at ease, because they are not restricted by the classical writing rules. It adds that students get more excited and motivated when their works are displayed on the Internet, read and commented on by other people.

Jarek points out that one advantage of using online materials is that they are up-to-date, unlike textbooks, which may have been in use for several years. Moreover, online materials are authentic and unintended to be used in classrooms, which makes them more exciting for students.

Jarek also warns that if students and teachers are not technology-literate, then it is absurd to use technology as an aid in teaching. At least students need to know how to surf the Internet, have typing skills, and a reasonable level in English that enables them to comprehend and interact with online materials. Teachers also need to be able to solve minor technical problems with computers and have another lesson plan ready to use in case there was a breakdown in connection with the Internet during the lesson.

Additional Articles this week:
In his article E-mailing to Improve EFL Learners' Reading and Writing Abilities: Taiwan Experience, Chao-chih Liao presented his experience with using emails to improve students' writing skills. I liked the idea of swapping emails where a group of English language students in some part of the world exchange emails with students from another part of the world. Not only this activity improves the writing skills, but it also enhances students' awareness of other cultures. Therefore, I suggest that we try it out here! What do you think?

Another interesting reading article this week was Andreea I. Constantinescu's paper on Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension. She argues that reading is interrelated with vocabulary, claiming that students need to know at least 95% of the vocabulary in a reading passage in order for them to comprehend it well. Andreea also emphasizes the importance of developing students' reading strategies through the use of multimedia.

B) Discussing skill-building websites (Reading and Writing):
After discussing the impact of technology on improving the skills of Speaking and Listening last week, this week we have started discussing the influence of technology on Reading and Writing. In this task, we had to go through a list of websites and find two or more specific web pages that would work for us in our class. You could find the links of these websites on my Delicious page.

The websites that I was interested in most were the TV411 website and the Breaking News English website.

From the TV411 website, I chose a writing activity that would work perfectly with my business students (intermediate), who will soon have to write a job cover letter. The good thing about this web page is that it helps students to gather and organize the information needed in a job cover letter in a nice step-by-step presentation. The final stage of this activity is free writing. Students should find no difficulty here because the pre-writing activities, i.e. gathering and organizing information, have done a great deal of the work.

Another activity I selected was from Breaking News English, which offers interesting lesson plans about recent stories in the world. For my General English students (intermediate), I have chosen an up-to-date lesson about the recent Internet censorship problem between Google and China. This is really a useful activity because it tries to address all four skills, i.e. reading, writing, listening and speaking. What is more, the story of the dispute between Google and China has been a point of focus in the world media recently, particularly on the BBC. Students may already have heard about this problem in their mother tongue language, and therefore, they should have no problem with digesting the subject.

2- Preparing a technology-enhanced lesson plan:
After reading about technology-enhanced lesson plans from the website of the University of Tennessee, we had to prepare a technology lesson plan based on the model template that our course teacher, Dr Deborah Healey, has suggested.

In my lesson plan, I prepared a lesson for my English Course (Reading & Writing). The lesson, which is titled: Introducing the Five-paragraph Essay, has capitalized on some materials printed out from the Internet. The reason I printed out the materials is that I can't get access to them from my class since it is not accommodated with technology.

3- Describing issues in class that technology might tackle:
After briefly describing who my students are (so that readers will have the necessary context), I outlined two issues with one of my classes this semester, hoping that technology will help to tackle these issues:

- I have difficulty finding and organizing materials. I spend a great deal of time thinking about ideas that could be used in the writing session. I often end up having a headache and feeling disappointed!

- I feel that many of my students are not quite motivated. In the class, there is no good interaction between students and teacher, and some students seem to be uninterested. In addition, many students skip classes!

4- Blogging:
This is a weekly task that we have to do in this course. Dr Deborah suggested that we should write our reflections on Friday so that other participants will have the chance to comment on them. I usually write my reflections on Thursday but this week I have been slow because I have had a lot to do at work. Let's hope things will be better next week!

Finally, I hope you enjoyed reading my blog and look forward to seeing your comments here.

Note: please cast your voice in the poll above. Thank you!

Yours,

Mohamed