Posts

Showing posts from 2012

"CTE319" and "wiki' / 'KWL' and 'wiki'.

I haven't heard about Wiki up today.  I want to learn to what extend can I can use this tool in my profession. I think using personal web site with  students helps teach English.  How?  In my opinion, as we do in our course, each web site has its own vocabulary peculiar to them.  For example, I learned many words that I haven't even known its meaning like "embed, concordances, vocabulary profiling, data driven learning, locating podcast, text-to speech and etc.." I think these words and word phrases are specific to these tools that raised my awareness on what do they mean and how I can implement them in my teaching.  What we can infer from these lines above, by unconsciously I learned new vocabulary, I expended my vocabulary repertoire.  Moreover, most of these tools require from us to comment on post of other people, get interact and send the message that we want to send through these tools so in that case good communicative skills are essential.  To establish this

Web 2.0 Tool: Storybird

Web 2.0 Tool: Storybird In this blog post you will find information on which tool I used to create my Second Conditional activity , the reason why I chose the tool that I chose and the how I will put into effect this application in my future profession. First of all, I want you all to bear in your mind that there are very good tools with different functions which can meet your needs in your teaching profession especially when you want to creat e activities, exercises and test.   When it comes to what I did, I should tell that the link which is below helped me a lot to discover the varieties of tools that can be used in teaching which will provide me efficiency and effectiveness .   

IMITATION AND CREATIVITY IN THE LEARNING PROCESS

Image
IMITATION AND CREATIVITY IN THE LEARNING PROCESS Imitation and creativity are two distinct issues that can be debated and still debated by people.  In this post you will see how imitation and creativity find their existence and became a debatable issue in the learning process.  These two points are what I am also interested in.  I have been always curious about that and now I found an opportunity to get more involved in this issue and figure out what is your point of view on this controversial issue :)  I think that it will be joyful journey for me to discover more different perspectives on this issue with the help of your contributions. Learning by imitation =) It is known that imitation i s one of the important characteristics of all species in the world because every species has an instinct to imitate and learn.  For example, think of  big cats like lions, what do they do? They bring their kitten to show how they hunt a gazelle or antelope.  This shows how kitt

Technology

KWL

    I have learned how to prepare an activity such as fill in the gap activities regarding words.  Moreover, I have learned that how I will organize a text that will make students try to put into order the sentences that are mixed.  There are more applications that I liked but these two are the ones that I liked most.     When I need to prepare an activity for my class I can take advantage from this Web called Teacher's Pet I think that it will save my time, because it will take too long to prepare a text by taking considerations with its layout and organizations as well.

KWL

    Interactive web pages as long as I have learned are kind of web sites that facilitate quiz, exercises and activities that can learners access easily and learn how much they know the content related with specific activities.  These web pages gives learners clues while they are doing the activities and after the activities are done it gives the feedback to learners about their performance on the task.  The learners can reflect on their performance and learn how much they learned.     I want to learn whether the interactive web pages have writing or reading activities besides contains gap filling exercises, cross words exercises, ordering exercises?     I think that interactive web pages are more efficient because they allow me to access different type of activities that I may not find enough time to prepare for my students.  With the help of these pages they can use online resources to access and do activities and quizes which at the end will give them a kind of feedback and also w

KWL

I know that when the issue is making a specific text readable means that it should be well-organized and well-written (correct grammar structure, not using very high and complex English words).  For example, when I was taking the course called Advance Reading and Writing, I was taught how to write a good essay by applying certain methods of doing this.  In addition to, when we are writing an essay, we were supposed to write the title so that it gives a reference to readers what this text about; moreover, we were supposed to write according to the organizations of the paragraphs, we weren't supposed to start writing without making an outline the steps and organize the paragraphs within.  We were supposed to make transitions between paragraphs so that it will lead the reader to know what will be in the next paragraphs.  All I have mentioned above were the prerequisites for the good readable text.  All I know to check the spelling mistakes from the application in the computer that is
I have learned that the blog that if I create for my teaching purpose should  take involve my students, including me and the students families as members as the blog that I will create will be a dynamic application between me, my students and their families.  Why it is important to include the families is because they can comment on their children posts so that they will encourage their children that's why the parents of students are important in that case.  The other important issue that I should bare in my mind about the blog is that the blog I will create should not consist things that irritating or insult peoples and clash with opinions.  My blog should be in the basis of teaching and learning.  I can send my students assingment proper to their levels, competence and interests.  Moreover, I can demnd from them to comment on their mates' posts again I may not want them to do it as my requests will change  according to their leves, competence and interests.  All I need to do
I have learned from this activity how I can find the new wasy of analyzing an unknown words that I can face with while reading a text given.  The new ways called, concordance, multi-concordance, vocabulary profiling, key words output, useing wordle to get the most frequent words in a given text and etc.  I can multiply my strategy towards my teaching profession by using these application as they give me chance to get better inforation from them.  These activities supply pratical ideas and pratical ways for both me as both student and teacher candidate.  I think it is important to not stuck with google, but finding a new ways of beneficial sources that will enhance both teaching and learning process
Multiple-concordance application help students to discover the lexico-grammar of the word in this way: when they are thought to use the www.lextutor.ca. they will be able to see the colomn called teacher where concordance and multiple concordance applications there are.  when they click the multiple-concordance and type the word that they would like to learn its lexico-grammar they will see that a new page opens and shows how the word that they are looking for usedn in different sentences as in the following link: http://conc.lextutor.ca/concordancers/multi/conc.pl?inputs=technology&this_corp=bnc_spoken.txt&limit=12&format=plain&wid=small&dico=Eng_Eng I think students should need special training as this new type of site would challnge them while they are trying to use applications in ti. I also as a student wouldn't be aware of it as long as I wasn't trainde in CTE319 coure, becaue I haven' seen or heard this type site that has all these funtions
I think concordance useful in seeing words in a contex in a text.  Let's suppose that I found difficulty in understanding the meaning of technology in a given text when I was reding it.  By using the application "concordance" I can type the word or words one by one in a given blank and click the submit button, then it will show me how the word technology is used in different context as it will show you in the following link: www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html  As the site doesn't lead yout to the link that takes you up the result of my concordance application I have past the link to show you how I reach the concordance.  Briefly, as soon as I reach this site after clicking on this link I wrote the word that I gave it as example to you and then go a liltle bit above and click the get concordance button on the right below side.  This led me to find a lot of use of the word technology.
The differences that I found in when using word cloud or vocabulary profiling were that: word cloud helped me a lot to not waste time to read long articles; instead, it made me able to learn what is it about by just looking the more frequent words that were used in that text.  Word Cloud application in a way brough me the summary of the text that I was responsible to read.  When it comes to the Vocabulary Profiling it was more complex and equipted with its use.  For example, when I paste the article in the blanket  and then clik go, I was be able to get the most frequent words through the least frequent ones, but I was also be able to find a page in Vocabulary Profiling that omits the key words from the text and put them above and it allows you to find the synonyms of it by clicking the arrow beside the blankets.  I can gain advantage of it when I prepare any vocabulary activities for my class.
Image
I first would distribute a  small piece of paper filled with those words or more that I have selected for them to make them first focus on them.  After they took a look, I would distribute the article to them to read  in 30 minutes and then I would tell them while they are reading, to higlight the words that they have read beforehand they read the article.  After they finished reading I would ask them why I put the focus on these sepecific words, what can be the importance of these words for us and I would like to ask them to summarize the text by making a connection to the words that were given to them from the very begining of the activity.  My aim by doing like this would  be make my students to specific the frequent words that they face with in the article and not to focus each word through reading because they don't have to know each word in a text.  All they need to do is try to find the key words that will help them through reading it so they will figure out the main purpose
I would use the words suh as " moblie, technology, affect, university, academy, students, culture, research, educate, grow and etc .  These words were used in the artcle that I have chosen for pre-intermediate class to teach.  The reason why I chose these specific words in the text is I believe that they will help my students a lot to understand the text without starting reading it.   These word will give shape in their minds a frame regarding with the article.  http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/04/business/mobilology-mobile-university-revolution/index.html?iid=article_sidebar  http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/04/business/mobilology-mobile-university-revolution/index.html?iid=article_sidebar
I know the word itself lexis means that the stock of the words in a language but I don't know anything specifically lexis in English texts.
I think a vocabulary profiler likes prism to vary the commonness of the words that are in a given text.  This will shows how often the words are being used according to their colors.  I think that same words will not have always the same colors because the more its context changes the more it becomes either most common or less common.  For example, as the sun, the world, the moon belongs to geographic text, these are not seen in a mathematical texts so their being frequency will change according to what type of context they are being used.
I think nothing surprised me actually but when we think about the word frequency vary or not I can say yes it varies.  Tthe types of English e.g American versus British English depends on which language variables (phonetic, semantic,syntactic,lexical) changed in what conditions.  For example, Americans uses Soccer instead of saying football it has semantic meaning but the use of this word changed.
I think the native speakers are the ones that make the language in a full sense to live can score better results from such a test.  This is in my opinion because the fact that native speakers are born in that language so it will be more easy to figure out the words whether can be used frequently or not.  I think it depends on how much you are exposed to the use of the words.  Being native or non-native is not the representation of how much you are talented in guessing the most frequently used words.
I think distributing word list is acceptable for me but I would like to lighten my students to use dictionaries either(hard-copy) or electronic so that they will not only find the words meaning, but also they will find words' part of speech, their uses of in different context.  In this case the word list without giving more information about words in this sense seems more limited.
Why not we explicitly focus on learning vocabulary?  We as teacher candidate prepare specific vocabulary activities for the class so that we increase their vocabulary capacity.  The more they learn new words and get habit to use them in their lives the better they can adjust their use of vocabulary in an appropriate way.  Decontextualization  of vocabulary is may not possible every time because there will be the words that they can't figure out just by looking at once so they will need the context.
Students won't learn the common words naturally because the need to learn them is on the other hand is to communicate.

vocabulary profiling

I think we as especially foreign language students that deals with the language itself, should try to use those new words frequently so that it becomes a habit after a while and then, as a result the use of the new words become frequent in communicating.  For teachers, it is also the same according to me as learning doesn't end it is a process throughout the life.  We built up our knowledge even if we are young or old. Therefore, teachers should develop their sense of frequency in terms of teaching.

vocabulary profiling

Our course books don't include such activities now but as I have studied at Prep. School there were such activities to enhance our vocabulary capacity.  when I guess mostly I fail because of the unpredictable words.

vocabulary profiling

For students it is quite often to guess the meaning of the unknown words because it is not only related with the words' meaning but it is also related with the context where they are being used.  It happens to me, for example, the test that I took yesterday which is called "the most common 10.000 words" challenged me in terms of choosing the appropriate words even they weren't used in long long sentence.  

Teaching Ideas CTE319 and Data-driven Learning

As far as I understood, all the followings that we are trying to do during the lesson called CTE319 firstly as students being aware of the sources that there are whenever we need to gain from them regarding with any issue. We can find information by using differents kinds of sources such as, blogs, tweeter, edmodo adn etc differently than google and yahoo.  This is the one side of using internet based sources.  I think the other point that teachers perefer to use these kind of sites for the sake of processing the lessons in an interesting way it is because of  the fact that using such sites enhance the atmospehre of the class. What I mean by saying 'atmosphere' is that these applications, activities during the class break the ices between teachers-students and students-students or the general atmosphere that every students sometimes get bored  because; for example, using a blog that is build up for a specific purpose of  a class will require from all the members in the class i

DDL

Answers to the Task 3: What extra information that cncordance provided me was , when I clicked on any word it gave me its use in sentences.  This was not the only advantage that I took from it.  I was be able to get a definition/descriptions about what the materials meant. I didn't understand what this second question wanted from me to explain. I think mostly the  prepositions comes after the word 'materials'  is being used.  However, both 'enhanced' and 'authentic' take noun right after they are used. I think the stronger collocate of 'material' was 'for'.

DDL

Answer for the second question in the Task 2:  The top five words matched with my keyword summary.  As I have learned some strategies that I should take before hand I start reading a writing I first tried to understand what I can gain from the text just by trying to figure out from the title itself.  As most of the titles includes learning and related things I understood that the text that is given will be more related  learning , leraning theories and some practices that are used to enhance the leraning.

DDL

Anwer for the second question in the Task2: In my opinion, there may be times for students that they got busy because their readings and assingments.  In this case, as student, I can say that time is very very important thing for a student to feel good and hopeful to fulfill the assingments.  Therefore, such a view of text can be effective in summarizing  1-2 pages long readings for students and this will provide students not to waste time on reading at all.

DDL

Answer for third question in Task1: I think that data-driven learning more suited to individual becasue when there is a group work, okay, everyone shares their opinions but it becomes a group work means you construct your knowledge by the contributions from the other memebers of your group.  As a  result, you are limited in building up your own knowledge.

DDL

Answer for second question in Task1: I think data-driven learning increase the students' competence in hypotizing any knowledge.  As it is lerner-centered, it means that the students are the ones that solve a given task; for example, a problem based task which also help students to discover new ways of solving a problem and discovering new perspectives that can be applied into the solution as well.
In response to the question , my answer as a students will be as following:   I would use blog to discover what is happening around and I would try to learn how people use their blogs and for what purposes.  Moreover I would prefer to use blog as assistant  for my profession.    when I try to look from teacher's perspective, I would say that posting my students related sources with the course through the blog and make them be aware of the the positive sides of using blog, I think would make them interested in my lesson rather than getting bored from the standard ways of distributing materials.  This way of doing would bring a diversity to my class and as a result my course could become an enjoyable one.

My Expectations of CTE 319

Image
I think this course will be different from the other traditional courses as we will go through the computer, our blogs and etc.   We are going to use EDMODO