E-Journaling and Oral Language Skills

The article "A Web-Based Approach to Strategic Learning of Speech Acts" by Cohen and Ishihara discuss their students' use of e-journaling in their study as a way of reflecting on their learning experience about the speech acts they had studied. They gave these students some structure so that there was a way of making comparisons between each student's journal and had them reflect on six different areas such as "Issues and confusions they had about the material" (10) and "Their experience using the speech acts in authentic out-of-class contexts" (ibid). Overall, most of the students seemed to feel like the e-journaling was beneficial and allowed them the chance to think through these speech acts in more depth and understand their cultural importance in ways they hadn't considered before.

As far as using e-journaling in a classroom to help develop oral language skills, I think a similar "awareness raising" purpose could be incorporated into an ESL classroom. For instance, in an intermediate or advanced class, students could use an e-journal to write down vocabulary or expressions they have overheard and then try to analyize or discuss the context in which they heard the word to get a better idea of how and when the word might be used. They could even write a short dialog or example sentences to process that vocabulary item. If it were a blog type environment, other students could provide feedback or other examples of sentences with that vocabulary item or they could help each other if said student didn't understand the word and simply wanted feedback/help about its definition.

Honestly, though, I'm not sure how or if e-journaling could actually tackle the pronunciation of these words. Any thoughts on this?

Reflections on wikis

I have some mixed feeling about using wikis in an ESL classroom. Some of my main concerns revolve around the fact that wikis are collaborative and like any collaborative project, it's possible that students won't pull their own weight. While it's possible to monitor who has contributed what to the project, that doesn't necessarily mean that some student might not at least feel that they won't be monitored. Admittedly, the teacher could explain how they might monitor the wiki and this could help mitigate this concern, but it might be difficult to totally dissuade a student from pulling his/her own weight. Another concern would also be related to Klunder's article in that students may not enjoy working with wikis and/or feel like they are helpful or useful at all (though clearly that study's results were skewed by the fact that many of them had never used them). Finally, students can add inappropriate material or (more likely) they can add incorrect material and so there needs to be time-intensive monitoring of the wiki to ensure that the information contained within it is not crude or incorrect.

I do like the idea of using wikis for distance learning because it could be a way for students to work together at a distance. There's the possibility that it could be a time-saver for the students and a way from students to learn from each other about a given topic and create meaning together. Additionally, wikis could be used by teachers as a way to collaborate on a teaching idea or just in sharing information.

Negotiation of Meaning in Network Based Communication

I agree, by and large, with Pellettieri that NBC can be a useful activity that "fosters the negotiation of meaning" (83). It puts the students into a synchronous communication environment yet unlike speaking, it slows down the time sequence which allows students to respond at their own pace or at least allows them time to process what is being said and select their vocabulary/grammar structures. Due to the fact that the students have this slight lag, Pellettieri suggests that students actually spend more time processing their grammar then they might in oral production.

I also agree with Pellettieri that this type of activity could devolve into a rather chaotic process if it is not guided in some way and have some specific end or goal in mind. For instance, giving students a topic to debate or discuss or (better yet) a specific end they need to achieve will help guide their discussions and keep them from: a) talking about whatever they might think of and b) require some kind of accountability for their discussion.

Perhaps one of the best things about it is that "NBC" is authentic input and output and let's students practice a variety of strategies as well as discourse markers that might not come up in more "stilted" classroom practice.

Project Proposal (Bill Harris and Sabah Khan)

Bill and Sabah's ESL Teaching Tips: Project Proposal

The intended audience of the instructional activities is a four-skills English for Academic Purposes class. The intended level is intermediate.

The purpose of the instructional activities is to review and reinforce comparative and superlative structure formation through practice and production of these structures.

We plan to incorporate two CALL tools into our lesson. As one of the practice activities, we would be using a self-monitored multiple-choice activity, such as the following website:
http://a4esl.org/q/h/vm/compsup2.html. We also plan to incorporate YouTube into the lesson as part of a production activity, in which each of the students will be recorded while giving a presentation comparing/contrasting two local restaurants. There will be a minimum requirement of comparative and superlative structures that will have to be used in each presentation. Once the recorded video clips have been uploaded to YouTube, the videos could be used for teacher-to-student and student-to-student feedback in the form of comments posted under each video. The site will be set to 'private' so that the videos will only be accessible to students in that class.

We believe that the CALL tools that we have selected will enhance language acquisition for the targeted students. The online practice activity will give students the opportunity to self-monitor their understanding of comparatives and superlatives, promoting independent learning and consciousness raising of their own mastery of their ability to form the structures. The YouTube activity will give students (and the instructor) the opportunity to provide feedback about the students' use of the structures as well as any additional errors that they might encounter, all in an asynchronous manner.


The lesson will follow the following sequence (for two 2-hour class sessions):
DAY 1
1. Warm-up activity
2. Schema activation
3. Paired practice activity
4. Online practice activity (As described above)
5. Debriefing session
6. Explanation of presentation with model (Check, Please! clip on YouTube)
7. Preparation for recorded presentations
8. Record presentations

DAY 2
1. Warm-up activity
2. View presentations as a class
3. Students' and instructors' comments to be posted individually on computers as presentations are viewed as a class
4. Debriefing/feedback session


Links to sites that we will be using:
Comparative/Superlative Online Multiple-Choice Exercise
http://a4esl.org/q/h/vm/compsup2.html
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com

Podcast #2: ESL Reading Lessons

Bill and Sabah's ESL Teaching Tips, Episode #2

Our podcast contains some suggestions of how to conduct an ESL reading lesson. We will provide activity ideas to help students to improve their reading comprehension skills. We hope that you find our podcast helpful.

The intended audience is ESL instructors, but we welcome all listeners.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when listening to the podcast:
1. In the podcast, we talk about activity ideas for all three stages of a reading lesson: pre-reading, during-reading, and post-reading.
2. We recommend sequencing the during-reading activities from general to more specific comprehension tasks.
3. In order to guarentee 3-5 during-reading comprehension activities, we recommend using an authentic reading text of 1-2 pages.

Link to Podcast:
http://billharris.podbean.com/bill-and-sabahs-esl-podcast-2-reading/

Useful links:
http://esl-programs-lessons.suite101.com/article.cfm/improving_esl_reading_skills (pre-reading)

http://departments.weber.edu/teachall/reading/prereading.html (pre-reading academic)

http://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/reading.html (reading activities)

http://iteslj.org/Lessons/ (more reading activities)

http://esl.about.com/library/lessons/bl_baker2.htm (sample lesson plan with pre-, during-, and post-reading activities)

http://home.earthlink.net/~cnew/research.htm (copyright laws and education)