1 CALL for Listening and Speaking

As instructed by Deborah and Sandra, I read both articles and found them useful for my teacher training applications. I would like to thank this week’s a very special guest Sueanne who contributed a lot with her ideas and suggestions. Her intriguing questions prompted us to think and question more about the use of technology. Her suggestion of using cell phone to practice speaking and listening skill was great. I also would like to thank my colleagues who shared their opinions and interesting ideas for integrating technology to English classes.

This week, some of my colleagues talked about the role of listening and speaking in SLA. There is no doubt that speaking, listening and pronunciation has been neglected for many years due to the comprehension approach which suggested that teaching of speaking should be delayed until comprehension skills are established and now it is good to see that these three skills deserve their popularity (though pronunciation is still neglected in my country).


Having discussed the importance of speaking and listening skills on Nicenet posts, it is worth mentioning the ways of using technology in these two skills. I totally agree with my colleagues who think that web 2.0 tools allow students to practice listening, pronunciation and speaking skill. I think we should find ways to make use of web 2.0 tools. My suggestion is you can have a look at Nik Peachey’s book “Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers”. Adding multisensory elements, text, sound, pictures, and video can provide meaningful contexts to facilitate comprehension, increasing opportunity to use authentic language suggested by Miller.
That’s all for the time being. Thanks for reading me. Hope to hear your comments.

2 This week's topics were very delicious

Dear colleagues,
Welcome to my blog… This week I learned a lot of fruitful things again.

Firstly, I have to admit that how practical and convenient it is to use Delicious.com. Until last week, I used to save my favorite sites in my PC, but always had difficulty to find them. But now I can bookmark my search engines under different categories, so the next time I need specific information, I don’t have to search for the website anymore. Delicious definitely saves time. Another advantage of delicious is that I can share my bookmarks with my friends and see their bookmarks as well. For instance, when I looked some of my colleagues’ tags, some were really interesting and beneficial for me. I think saving important web pages allows us to work collaboratively with other colleagues when we work for the same goals. Last but not least, I noticed that we can use delicious as GOOGLE. For example, instead of googling, I can find websites that I need just by tagging and I can see how popular that search engine because of the number of the people who tagged that search engine. It’s just great.

This week’s another topic was exploring skill building web sites. Thanks to my colleagues, I learned many useful sites especially for listening and speaking skills. I also want to mention that, this week I felt very sorry to have been misunderstood by some of my colleagues. I think my wording caused this misunderstanding. Once again, I would like to mention that I am NOT AGAINST sharing web-sites with my students. In fact, we already had given the addresses of all skill building sites in my institution’s web page by the time school opened. However, teaching English is very different from teaching literature. Literature instructors should be careful when delivering his/her course. Some instructors may copy the analysis of literary texts instead of interpreting them. If students find the resource of that instructor then it may not be good for him/her. For example, SparkNotes is a very popular web-site especially for analyzing literary texts. You can also find some very good examples of essay topics with their answers. Imagine that a teacher using that site for preparing the exam and asking the same essay question without realizing that students are also using that site. Then, students do not have to question or interpret the literary texts. Once they discover that the instructor is using that site for both lecturing and preparing exam, they definetly abuse it.They can copy down the answers form the internet. That’s why I wrote “it’s not good for students to know all the resources of teachers”. However, this kind of thing can’t happen in English teaching. On the contrary, I believe that especially at the early stages of learing English imitating is necessary. There are quite apparent differences between English teaching and English literature teaching in terms of teaching strategies and application of methods. I hope, I am clear enough...

In my next post, I will talk about the ways of integrating technology to our lessons. Please continue to read my post.

5 Week Two Finalized

The first learning objective for the week 2 was “After reading about the ABCD model, participants will share a behavioral objective for a class they teach, using the ABCD model, in at least one post on Nicenet” and I asked to myself “Did I read the ABCD model, write a behavioral objective and share it with my colleagues on Nicenet?”. The answer was YES. The interesting thing I noticed was “objectives of the task were the statements of what I did at the end of the task as a result of having completed the task, NOT what I will do while doing the task. So, the main confusing point is here, I guess because I came into realization that while writing the objectives for my class, I always used to think about what students will do while doing the task. As a result, I alwyas used the wrong verbs such as read, understand and know etc.Therefore, in order to write a successful objective we need to distinguish between these two,I think.
In addition, ABCD model was very helpful to me to understand the logic of writing objectives. Developing a set of learning objectives helps teachers identify their goals and directions for the course, thereby reducing the chance of wasting their own time, as well as wasting students’ time on irrelevant subject matter.
What’s more, to be honest, I’ve always heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy in the context of critical thinking skills. Up to this week, I haven't heard this taxonomy could be applied to writing objectives. Using Bloom’s Taxonomy for writing objectives is great!!!

This week’s another objective was analyzing the search engines in terms of use in their own classes and sharing their advantages and disadvantages. Discovering new search engines were very useful for me but I feel guilty that I couldn’t have time to read all of my colleagues’ search engine suggestions…So, for today I set up my OBJECTIVE.
“By the end of the day, I will be able to identify and list the search engines that my colleagues put forward.

Before ending my sentences, one thing I want to confess is that I cannot give up GOOGLING. I’m so accustomed to using Google for my searches that whenever I want to look for something, I always Google. I wonder if the same thing happens to you or not? Can you think of any advice to give me so that I try other search engines?

2 My e-learning journey-Second week

What a week!!! Since it was the last week of our first term, we conducted achievement and speaking exam to 1300 prep class students. Therefore, I spent most of my time at school conducting exams, reading the papers and of course dealing with the problems of students. The next two weeks, I am sure I’ll have much more time to write on my blog. But before I start to write, I have to admit that last week’s comments to my blog made me very happy. With your encouragement, I am really motivated to learn and search more about blogging. Thank you again…
In my Nicenet posts, I remember telling you how well my students benefit from making technology. Now, I just want to give you an example. This term my students prepared a commercial video as their term project and I think they really did a good job. My co-worker put those videos on YouTube. If you want to see my students’ performance, you can visit: http://www.youtube.com/cengonline In fact, I’ll be very appreciated if you vote those videos because the ones who get the most votes will be rewarded by me and my co-worker. I should remind you that those students started from elementary level in September. Now, they are pre-intermediate students.
Anyway, this week was another fruitful week for me. Last week, Dilip shared a useful blog http://nikpeachey.blogspot.com and I visited that site and I found it really perfect!!! I downloaded Nik’s “Web 2.0 Tools for Teachers” book for free. Believe me there are great ideas here. Thank you Dilip for sharing such a great blog.
The reading materials posted by Deborah and Sandra were also very useful. On Tuesday, I spent my whole day web-searching different sites. Oppss, I’m sorry but I have to cut it here because I have to attend one of my friend’s wedding :) I have many things to say about this week, please read my blog…

5 A journey to find my own voice

Dear Colleagues,
Welcome to my first post...
To be honest, I've never thought that creating a blog is such an easy step. However, trying to write something worth in my blog was not as easy as I assumed. The main problem I encountered was how to begin writing my personal blog? After sitting in front of the computer and brainstorming for hours, I found, to my surprise, that writing about my blog was a great pleasure...
In my opinion, the main question to be asked here is "How will I and my students benefit from blogging?"
At the very beginning many ideas started to form in my mind. For instance, teachers can store videos, podcasts, music and other multimedia files so that the students can use them in the process of learning English. Therefore, learning might occur as a natural process.
As a second idea, this blog might function as a kind of dialogue journal which might help to establish a communicative environment in the classroom. Besides, it can provide an opportunity for my students to use authentic language through interactions with the teacher.
However, one thing I am sure is that this blog will teach me to reflect my learning experiences as well as share good practice with you.
I would be willing to continue to write my blog where time will allow; however, for the time being I should stop writing and continue reading about blogging for ELT.

Please feel free to write to me! I'll be happy to hear from you (suggestions/feedback welcome!)