Week 3 : Aural/oral skill-building reflections

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!