Discussion Questions 8

• What are the common problems in teaching grammar? What is a recently defined goal of teaching grammar?

            I think grammar is an ancillary role, that is, the purpose of teaching grammar is facilitating other 4 skills, reading, writing, speaking, and listening. However, some teachers forget this purpose and only focus on grammar, so they force their students to memorize terms of grammar such as '관계대명사, 분사구문, etc.'. These teaching grammar, which miss the final goal, make just students think grammar is difficult and useless. By these teaching, students just know terms of grammar, but they do not apply in reading, writing, speaking, and listening.
              These days, the goal of grammar instruction is to enable students to carry out their communication purposes. Teachers remind the purposes and goals of teaching grammar to make students to apply their grammar knowledge in their real life.

• Explain communicative competence model of teaching grammar by using the example, "past tense." (NCLRC) or integrative grammar lesson (Pekoz)

          I will show you an example of class to explain communicative competence. First a teacher makes students talk with their classmate about what they did in yesterday. The teacher induce them to use past tense. After conversation, students read the essay written with a lot of past tenses, and teacher asks them to find the past tenses. After reading, students are asked to write their diary about what they did in yesterday and read aloud and listen class mates' diary one another.

Wikispaces

http://multimediagwh.wikispaces.com/

week 12-1) Class Activities

•Internet TESL Journal's Reading List

•Student's project: Self-access online reading 1   2   3

•Moodle Reader :Extensive reading

•MA students' eNews Paper Project: IVY Times

•eNIE project: My Apple News

•My online reading collection for children

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My Idea-Making simple image of listening

☞CALL review 3☜

     Professor displayed multiple online tools and resources for speaking. I posted activities which I enjoyed in last class. So you can check very useful CALL speaking resources or programs if you click on the hyperlink here. http://younahing.blogspot.kr/2012/10/week-7-2-class-activities.html

   My favorite resource among a lots of online speaking tools is Practice Speaking with Mike (Talkingbot) http://www.eslfast.com/robot/tutor_mike.htm. This homepage provides us very simple but useful activity for ESL Students. In this site, we can see the talkingbot called 'Mike', who is our teacher and helper to improve our speaking skill. Firstly, he begin to introduce the purpose of this site. Under the him, there is a box where we can talk with him. If you type something in the chatting box, he answer very fast. By asking some questions and having conversation with Mike, we can learn how to reply to real native people or English users. While I had conversation with him, I felt as if I talk a real foreigner. As a result, I can learn authentic language naturally and practice conversation out of class.
 

   The strengths of this CALL resource are countless. Firstly I think students can engage in real conversation without going abroad to meet a native English speaker. It is conductive to time saving and also money saving.

   Second, this site can help student study by content-based instruction, because he can answer also easy academic questions. When I asked "Where is Korea?", he answered Mike: The country is located in Asia. Like this we can also gain the knowledge.
   Lastly, we can use this site anytime and anywhere, without any help, because it is very simple and easy to use. We do only Just enter the question, and answer the Mike's comment. These simple activities can help you improve English speaking skills.

  However, there are also some weaknesses. When I asked same question repeatedly, he just showed same answer. Also I sometimes get his strange and inappropriate answers when I asked some weird questions to see how well he can answer. Like these examples YOU: i dided Mike: I see what you mean. or  YOU: i will be killed Mike: You will? OK he has a limitation. Furthermore, he can not understand questions with type-off. YOU: Where is Koorea? Mike: I really don't know. Would you teach me if you know? Please say "It is ..." .  If the site take some advises into consideration and try to change some defaults it has, then it will become a better useful site for all kinds of English learners around the world. Furthermore I think this site needs some functions such as capturing the chat or uploading to own blog, twitter, or facebook, and also if we can share with another users the chat, we can learn easily how others chat with Mike, checking various dialogues.

   Finally I think this CALL is very useful and motivating tool for English learners. If I will be a English teacher, I use this effective site for my future students.
  

week11-2) Class Activities [Taking Note]

Extensive Reading 

• Reading a lot 
• Reading for pleasure 
• Individual activity 
• Easy reading 
• Top-down 
• Understanding the idea 
• Reading fast 

Intensive Reading

• Short reading 
• for studying (analyzing languages) 
• Understanding in detail(vocabulary, main ideas, structure,etc.) 
• Bottom-up 
• Accuracy 
• Focus on form or grammar 
• Benefits of IR : Efficiency,learning good standard reading, specific rules, 
• Weakness of IR : de-motivation(boring and uninteresting), No authentic reading.

Discussion Questions7

1. Are you a top-down reader? or bottom-up reader? When you read novels do you read top-down or bottom-up? What strategy do you use when you read new articles or academic references?

   When I read some materials, I usually read them top-down. I guess and predict the content and these activities make me easy to understand.
   When I read read novels, I also use top-down strategies. While I read the novel, I constantly predict what will happen at next page and character's future choices by using my schemata or background knowledge.
   I use bottom-up strategy when I read new articles or academic references, because I have a little schemata and feel difficult to activate my schemata.


2. What is ER(extensive reading)? How is it different from Intensive reading which we have practiced in English classes in Korea.
   Extensive reading is reading of large quantities of material or long texts; for global or general understanding; with the intention of obtaining pleasure from the text. Further, because reading is individualized, with students choosing the books they want to read, the books are not discussed in class.
   Intensive reading involves learners reading in detail with specific learning aims and tasks. It can be compared with extensive reading, which involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general reading skills.

3. How does technology assist ER? Give me one example.

   Teachers can use various sites, which provide a lot of reading materials. These sites can provide a lots of 'comprehensive inputs' and increase the students' exposure to the language.