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Saturday, January 28, 2012

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 :


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!

4 comments:

  1. Hi Zun
    I agree with you just like you this week I have learned a lot from aural/oral skills building using technology. Now I have in my mind a great deal of resources to work with in my futures lessons. I have never imagined how many resources we can find in the web, most of them are excellent, we just need to apply them in the English teaching and learning process. I am sure our student are going to enjoy a lot learning English through technological resources and as teachers I think we will have better results in their performance while we use these online tools.
    I think not only your students are shy mine are too, However with all the resources we have now maybe we will get our students to feel a little more confident to express using English Language.
    Regards,
    Vilma

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    Replies
    1. Hi Vilma,
      I agree that it is important to apply these new tools in our teaching to improve our students' learning process. They are excellent tools! and students will definitely enjoy learning English through them as you said.
      Take care.
      Zun Phyu

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  2. Dear Zun,

    good luck with your endeavors on CALL skills. The Larry Ferlazzo's website, which you mention, was a real discovery to me (I found it on a Nicenet while reading our discussions) -- it is great that teachers find time not only to teach, but also to share their experience.
    it was nice reading your reflexions and experiences.
    have a nice weekend,
    Lina

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  3. Hi Lina, thanks for your wishes. I also need to discover more about speaking websites from Larry Ferlazzo's blog and apply them in my teaching. Look forward to another great week with all of you. Take care.

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