Life goes on ….. in week 4 with multi-skills, technology enhanced lesson plan and some issues

Everything is possible if you have hope and desire

Well, I could finally manage to finish all the tasks for this week. Some unexpected things happen during this week. One of my best colleagues suffered a severe unknown head pain; had to quit teaching a private tuition as I can’t put more effort; my long-lost friend contacted me; experienced Nicenet down when I was about to post my class issues and at the same time my internet was down and had to use at cyber shop. What a week!

No matter what happens, life goes on and so do my dream of becoming the best ESL teacher for my students and my life-long learning desire for the development of my teaching profession. I am happy to live every seconds of my life as long as I am teaching and learning. It is no doubt that I have learned new ways of teaching methods using technology in this week. First we discuss about reading, writing, vocabulary and grammar lessons. I have a clear view of reading as an active skill which involves the interaction between the reader and the text. It is valuable to know how various multimedia glosses (visual, text) enhance students’ vocabulary while practicing reading skills from the article “Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition andReading Comprehension" by Andreea I. Constantinescu.  
I also enjoyed reading the article “Using the Internet in ESL WritingInstruction” by Jarek Krajka.

Have you ever heard of pre-while-post stages in teaching writing skill? According to Jarek Krajka from Poland, you can teach in these ways using Internet as your favorite teaching aid. In pre-stage, analyze writing model pieces; teach grammar, vocabulary and structures offline. Then let the students fill up their minds with full of varied and authentic writing materials and ideas while exploring and browsing through Internet.  After they finish writing their pieces, teacher corrected them and they publish their work on the class website in order to discuss students’ performance and to develop listening and speaking skills based on the knowledge gained during online class. What a marvelous writing lesson out of ordinary one! I set a goal to create a student key pal connection and creating class website to develop students’ motivation and let them experience written interaction by communicating one another. 

Since I have never taught a technology enhanced lesson, it takes me quite some times to figure out planning the listening, speaking and vocabulary focus lesson in which Internet is accessed in the class. It really helps me understand how technology can add variety addressed to different learning styles. 

What is more, we are asked to describe some issues in the class which might have solved by the help of technology. I have some issues of students’ motivation, presentation works, learner’s autonomy and limited time for practicing language and concern about my assessing students’ work and lack of resources. It is quite interesting to see most of my colleagues concern for their students’ motivation. I am certain that there are a lot of amazing technology tools which could solve this issue. 

They look interested in tech. A kind of motivation?

By the way, I found more favorite websites to add to my Delicious this week. They are some fascinating multi-skills websites which I could use to teach all the important English skills in one place.  I have shared a number of great websites in Nicenet. Some of my favorite multi-skills websites are:

• Lauri’s ESL Website
• ESL Independent Study Lab
• Many Interesting Things for ESLstudents
• 5 minute English
• Karin’s ESL Partyland
• English Page
• Activities for ESL students
• ESL America.US

I found them very interesting in their unique way. They all provide great learning materials for students and teachers. The thing is you just need to choose wisely for the benefit of your students’ learning.

One week ends. Another is about to begin soon…and life goes on......