In week 3, we discussed important
facts about aural/oral skills building using technology. I think listening and
speaking are essential and important skills for second language learners. When
you first meet the people, you have to talk and understand what they say to
have a proper conversation. This is why I always love teaching these skills to
my students who mostly are shy speakers. For shy learners, I need some ways to
motivate them to speak more in the class. Honestly, there are times I’m a bit
worried for my shy students that they would give up learning English. I teach
with a variety of speaking activities where they all engage actively in the
lesson. As my school follows international curriculum, students have to speak
in English only during the school hours. Apart from that, I have never used
speaking practice lessons with online tools. I have known a lot of great
speaking practices websites in this week from my tutor and colleagues.
Some of my
favorite aural/oral skills building sites which I have already added to
Delicious are :
- Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab
- Real English
- The Best Sites to Practice SpeakingEnglish by Larry Ferlazzo
- BBC Learning English
I found them really suitable for my
students to enhance their aural/oral skills through listening, watching video
dialogues of native-speakers etc. I will try to test all the sites from Larry
Ferlazzo’s list and see which ones work best for my students though it’ll take
quite some time to review all of them. Using technological tools allow students
to learn at their own pace in privacy which is really good for shy ones. Moreover
some students don’t get enough chance to talk in a group activity because of
some dominant learners. Since they don’t talk much, their ability and
confidence of speaking with others become weaker. For those students, they can
gain their confidence gradually while practicing the online speaking lessons. I
will try to teach at least one period per week (45 minutes in one period) using
online tools to practice their oral/aural skills. I believe that students will
improve the target skills if they have a chance to speak both inside and
outside of the class. What a great way! Oh if you are interested in teaching English through music, here is a great site, Musical English Lessons International, England.
Another task is
about reading and discussing about a past sample project report. I enjoy
reading the review of my colleagues on Nicenet. It helps me a lot to see how others
use the technology for various objectives in different situations. I’m already
excited for my own project.
Have a nice day to you all!
