2007年6月24日 星期日
Three Favorite Weblogs
1. The English Blog (for learners and teachers of English)
This is one of my favorite weblogs whose target users are learners and teachers of English, and therefore, there is abundant learning material in this blog. It covers 26 categories, such as books, business English, culture and music, and introduces many both entertaining and meaningful websites in each category. Through this blog learners can link to other interesting websites or ESL weblogs. The title of the latest post is Japanese Learning English. It is an English teaching video filmed by Japanese, and I have to say this video is pretty stupid but funny! In this video learners can learn some sentences about robbery, for example, take anything you want and spare me my life. But I think that on one wants to apply these sentences in real life.
2. Listen to English - learn English
I highly recommend this weblog especially to learners who want to improve their listening comprehension. Learners can know the learning target clearly in the home page. The introduce mentions that this is a podcast website for people learning English and it can help users improve their English vocabulary and pronunciation and listening skills. According to Yahoo dictionary, podcasting is "a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription". What's more, this blog also provides the full text of every podcast, so learners can look up the meaning of a specific word in a dictionary. In general this blog is qualified to the principles and criteria we set for English learning weblogs in three aspects. First, its title let users use directly that this is a blog for English learning. Second, this is well-organized and simple enough for users. Third, the content of this blog fulfills its learning goal- improve learners' listening comprehension. I think you should try it yourself!
3. english 360
The last one blog I want to introduce is english 360. This blog is built by a business English teacher who begun a short online course on using blog for language teaching (just like us!) and the author would like to share his profession with users of this blog. There are 15 categories in this blog and most of them are about language learning and teaching. I think this blog is more suitable for advanced learner and English teachers, since it provides profound skill of using English such as presentation skills. Basically, it does not fit our first principle, for from its title users cannot know it is about ESL learning. Users can acquire more information of this blog in the ABOUT section.
This is one of my favorite weblogs whose target users are learners and teachers of English, and therefore, there is abundant learning material in this blog. It covers 26 categories, such as books, business English, culture and music, and introduces many both entertaining and meaningful websites in each category. Through this blog learners can link to other interesting websites or ESL weblogs. The title of the latest post is Japanese Learning English. It is an English teaching video filmed by Japanese, and I have to say this video is pretty stupid but funny! In this video learners can learn some sentences about robbery, for example, take anything you want and spare me my life. But I think that on one wants to apply these sentences in real life.
2. Listen to English - learn English
I highly recommend this weblog especially to learners who want to improve their listening comprehension. Learners can know the learning target clearly in the home page. The introduce mentions that this is a podcast website for people learning English and it can help users improve their English vocabulary and pronunciation and listening skills. According to Yahoo dictionary, podcasting is "a method of publishing files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by subscription". What's more, this blog also provides the full text of every podcast, so learners can look up the meaning of a specific word in a dictionary. In general this blog is qualified to the principles and criteria we set for English learning weblogs in three aspects. First, its title let users use directly that this is a blog for English learning. Second, this is well-organized and simple enough for users. Third, the content of this blog fulfills its learning goal- improve learners' listening comprehension. I think you should try it yourself!
3. english 360
The last one blog I want to introduce is english 360. This blog is built by a business English teacher who begun a short online course on using blog for language teaching (just like us!) and the author would like to share his profession with users of this blog. There are 15 categories in this blog and most of them are about language learning and teaching. I think this blog is more suitable for advanced learner and English teachers, since it provides profound skill of using English such as presentation skills. Basically, it does not fit our first principle, for from its title users cannot know it is about ESL learning. Users can acquire more information of this blog in the ABOUT section.
2007年6月14日 星期四
Principles and Criteria for English Learning Weblogs
Principles:
1. First of all, we should let every visitor know that the site is about ESL learning, so the blog should be titled with directly.
2. The visual designs of the site should be simple yet captivating. It should be manipulated by learners with clear directions.
3. The content of the blog should fulfill our target learner's needs, and the target learner's age, language ability and other descriptions should be placed under the blog title.
4. Since we are building a site with Web 2.0 features, we should make sure that learners are capable of posting feedback or their practice outcomes, or comments on their interested articles. Rss, permalink and traceback would also help learning in distributing and aggregate learning materials.
5. With the help of Web 2.0 features, we can also make evaluation a public activity, such as web pulls and comments.
Criteria:
We think that there are some essential features a ESL/EFL weblog should have to help develop learner's four skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening. In order to improve learners' reading abilities, the weblog should include hypertext in its articles for learners to link to more reading materials. This is really crucial because it offers learners multiple choices to link to other texts, so that learners will have more self-awareness about their learning process.
As for writing, we think it is important for the weblog to provide text-input features, so that the learners can submit their feedback to the site, such as comments. And other basic functions like spell check and grammar check should be provided. After writing a paragraph, it is better to provide learners a chance to find out their mistakes, and help them revise their original one.
Thirdly, If a weblog aims to improve learners' listening and speaking abilities, it will need more multimedia features to support their goal. To help improve the learner's speaking abilities, the weblog should be able to record learners' voice input then analyze them(such as accent, pronunciation, and intonation), so that it would generate comments and suggestions to the learners, and help them speak better.
1. First of all, we should let every visitor know that the site is about ESL learning, so the blog should be titled with directly.
2. The visual designs of the site should be simple yet captivating. It should be manipulated by learners with clear directions.
3. The content of the blog should fulfill our target learner's needs, and the target learner's age, language ability and other descriptions should be placed under the blog title.
4. Since we are building a site with Web 2.0 features, we should make sure that learners are capable of posting feedback or their practice outcomes, or comments on their interested articles. Rss, permalink and traceback would also help learning in distributing and aggregate learning materials.
5. With the help of Web 2.0 features, we can also make evaluation a public activity, such as web pulls and comments.
Criteria:
We think that there are some essential features a ESL/EFL weblog should have to help develop learner's four skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking, and Listening. In order to improve learners' reading abilities, the weblog should include hypertext in its articles for learners to link to more reading materials. This is really crucial because it offers learners multiple choices to link to other texts, so that learners will have more self-awareness about their learning process.
As for writing, we think it is important for the weblog to provide text-input features, so that the learners can submit their feedback to the site, such as comments. And other basic functions like spell check and grammar check should be provided. After writing a paragraph, it is better to provide learners a chance to find out their mistakes, and help them revise their original one.
Thirdly, If a weblog aims to improve learners' listening and speaking abilities, it will need more multimedia features to support their goal. To help improve the learner's speaking abilities, the weblog should be able to record learners' voice input then analyze them(such as accent, pronunciation, and intonation), so that it would generate comments and suggestions to the learners, and help them speak better.
Hypertext V.S. Print Text
Q1:
hypertext: more extensive than accessible, more convenient than comfortable, prompt.
print text :more accessible than extensive, more comfortable than convenient, healthy.
Q2:
Interactive text gives a stage for everyone to exchange their knowledge.
It's a place where readers = authors.
Wikipedia is a great example of interactive text.
Fair share between two sides.
But after, it's up to you to participate.
Q3:
In our opinion, multimedia provides many information instead of responding.
You can get different information from blogs or Youtubes. It's more interesting and more various than traditional print text.
Podcasting is a great example of multimedia publishing.
hypertext: more extensive than accessible, more convenient than comfortable, prompt.
print text :more accessible than extensive, more comfortable than convenient, healthy.
Q2:
Interactive text gives a stage for everyone to exchange their knowledge.
It's a place where readers = authors.
Wikipedia is a great example of interactive text.
Fair share between two sides.
But after, it's up to you to participate.
Q3:
In our opinion, multimedia provides many information instead of responding.
You can get different information from blogs or Youtubes. It's more interesting and more various than traditional print text.
Podcasting is a great example of multimedia publishing.
PBL/PBL/IBL
Inquiry-based learning:
Students participates in many types of inquiry activities, and through the process of discovering their goals, they go through repeated stages of questioning, reflecting, and research.
Problem-based learning:
"It is often viewed as a component of these inquiry activities. …Problem-solving is generally understood to include skills such as making accurate observations, finding and organizing information, predicting, synthesizing, and using other higher order thinking skills to find solutions.” (Subtract from Call Essentials)In short, two of them are difficult to define precisely, but in this author’s point of view, he thinks basically problem-based learning is just a component of inquiry activities because they share the same skills which are necessary for language learners, but inquiry-based learning involves more complicated stages of inquiries. Through the process of inquiry activities, they apply their problem-solving skills to find the result of their goals.
Project-based learning:
“Project-based learning might productively be considered as one useful subcategory of problem-based learning in terms of not only designing a specific focus and context for student projects but in terms of getting students themselves to also (a) identify project constrains and feasibility; and (b) to plan and apply a design approach.”(Subtract from The Design of Effective ICT-Supported Learning Activities: Exemplary Models, Changing Requirements, and New Possibilities)So in conclusion,Inquiry-based learning> Problem-based learning> Project-based learning:
Question 2.
“A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing.” We all agree WebQuest is a good way for learning; however, our group prefers a multimedia project for our final project. Because our target learners are young children, it will be more attractive if we use multimedia. Although WebQuest can give a lot material, it will be kind of boring for young kids to read words without any pictures or sounds. We decide to use some pictures, animation and sounds to make our project more fun!
Question 3.
Our Goal:
Building a multimedia website that would help primary school English beginners (age 9-11) to acquire the ability as such to pass GEPT entry-level test.
Our Method:
Since we have decided our target learners as primary school children, it would be necessary for the content and the representation of our site to be captivating and of interest for young children. After discussion, we agreed that the topic for our multimedia website would be “Holding a Birthday Party”, which would involve 3 parts: Invitation, preparation and hosting. Thus our young learners would learn proper dialogues about an interesting event, and may apply their learned skills in their daily-lives.
Presentation of Our Website:
Since we have decided to build a multimedia website, we must facilitate all possible multimedia means to create a learning environment that should not only be visually appealing but also rich with sound and interactive activities. Pictures must be abundant on our site, recordings and music clips would be used, and simple Flash component and games would also be featured in our project.
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