Sunday, July 17th, 2011
The most important issue I learnt during this week was about the design of a Technology Enhanced Lesson Plan. We need to plan our classes and with this new pattern we need to specific the technology material we are going to use. Students are very attractive to technology, so this is a positive point for teachers to improve our classes and call students attention.
The web provides many tools for language learning and it is an invaluable source, for teachers to create classroom materials and for students to explore the whole world, since Internet gives students variety and choice, from an enormous number of sites. And in order to develop specific skills in our students.
In order to improve my students' writing skills, by using web resources I can apply different content and task based writing activities, such as: writing a letter to a friend, a formal letter, a biography, a description of a person, write an essay, a description of a festival/ceremony, a description of a book/film/play, a newspaper report, an opinion essay and a description of a place, etc. Applying of course cooperative learning in my on-line classroom.
For improving my student’s reading skill I will use a story, because stories are attractive and they call the attention of students. Through this, my students will get the main idea of texts through questions, and working in groups. They also will be able to answer questions about detailed information of the text, by sharing with their partners their ideas and thoughts. Finally students will elaborate an individual summary.
In addition, in order to improve reading and vocabulary I will apply the web page about news: (Breaking News English.
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/), where students can get informed and at the same time they get updated about the Business area, In this page I will use the link Business English materials. There are plenty of great sites out there that cover the “traditional” stuff like presentations, meetings, talking about graphs, etc. all of which lead students to read more and study more outside of the classroom, with the authentic material they can find.
In my opinion the main problem students have in English is pronunciation and writing. So considering these problems, the web can help a lot in order to improve all basic language skills reading, writing, speaking and listening, including the sub skills: grammar and vocabulary, since there are plenty of great sites in the internet that we teachers and our students can use. Personally I try to use in my class the Integrating skill approach where all the skills are integrated and not separated, the virtual class as a reinforcement and cooperative and collaborative learning.
Monica Vaca Cardenas
