#8. Open Topic/ Reflection

 Technology in English, a shortcut to be interested in English

 CALL course was a big challenge for me at the very first time since I'm a kind of  computer illiterate. However, I shouldn't have worried because it was not a computer machine work but creative English educational works. I have had hard time to activate or create some tools but it was worth it.

 

 The biggest strength of the computer based tools is catching interests. A lot of Korean EFL students are still not familiar with 'English' itself. What it means, they have anxieties in English since it's a big part of the 'Language' which they have to learn and study hard. However, for example, for young learners such as elementary school or middle school students are pretty much into the cartoons, short movies or quiz games. Domo Animate, Zimmer twins and Story bird are fun activities to do for students. Those tools are not like boring 'text books,' instead, they have fancy characters, colorful visual options and short language materials that make students feel quite comfortable to study.

 

 Availiability for creating by learners is another attractiveness. In creating process, students are able to think about the topic once again and concentrate more. For teachers, it might take more time than just printing out some hand-outs, they can definitely draw students' attention and interests though. Sharing creative works with students and teachers all together using various tools will improve English education environment. For this environment, a big amount of respects should be based on preventing from infringement of copyrights.

 

 

 CALL tools let students listen and speak frequently. Tools such as Audio box, Voice thread, Pod-cast and Skype etc., make learners' ears open and provide the environments for speaking confidently. Attempting is one of the important elements of learning English. By teachers' instruction or without instruction, learners can try by themselves listening and speaking English through easy access via lap-top, tablets or smart-phones, the trials can be done. If these trials accrue, their English skills will be much developed.

 

 For my future lessons, I would love to use various tools that I learned from this course. I will focus on adults' teaching recommending and introducing them Synchronous/Asynchronous CMC tools, listening/pod-cast tools and reference tools especially.

 

 Again, I had a bit of hard time to learn all of those tools but very worthwhile to be aware of and practice. Introducing and recommending useful and efficient tools to students are important duties for teachers and instructors. I've learned this definitely.

 

 

 

 

#7. Mobile App Review

1. Application's website: Read4English Learn English  http://www.brainglass.com

2. Brief review of the application/ How this App can enhance the learners' Emglish skills :

 





Read4English app helps English learners' fluent reading. Their mission statement is 'Listen, Read and Learn.' It provides recordings so that the learners can repeat after their pronunciation, stress and intonation. Recordings include celebrities' addresses, lectures and stories as well. During the reading user can save words function and that underpins fluent reading memorizing the meaning of word. App has learner caring fucnction, it shows learners' progressing process to motivate them. Earphones and learners' will for fluent English reading are needed with Read4English App.

 



Through  this App, learner can acqire correct pronunciation and intonation and vice versa. It will help learners' English reading fluency as Native speaker. One of the EFL students' problems of reading English is incorrect pronunciation. However, Read4English will guide you the right way to speak and read English, further, it definitely improve and enhance the EFL learners' fluency.

 

 

#6. Digital Story telling

1. Breif reviews about the tools

1) http://storybird.com

: Storybird.com let us make a new e-book that anywhere exist at all. It is a very useful tool for creative activities. Teachers can choose the pictures and characters that they want to put in a new story including class materials. Also, it is able to make short and long story they want. It has also artwork tags, so that teachers are easy to access the certain subjects or characters.

 

2) http://domo.goanimate.com

: Domo Animate is a extremely aninated tool. Teachers can make cartoons first and it also available like short video. Instead of reading the cartoon, we can create a new cartoon video via Domo Animate. It has lots of fuctions such as background music, zooming, fading out etc,. Learners will enjoy wathcing this  and creating by themselves as well. Also, all characters has various looks so creators have lots of options to make.

2. How could these tools be used by teachers and students?

: If teachers want to make new materials for their students, these kind of tools would be the best since teachers' creativity can come out through the outcomes. For storytelling books or cartoon making tools, teachers can create short stories that includes their teaching target language rules(e.g: grammar rules and conversation etc,.). Students also can create their own stories including the lamguage skills that they've learnt. It will be much fun instead of just doing the solving problems or take tests. Teachers can use this tool as their classes' assignments and students can create and present in front of peers or can share their work all together.

3. How could they be incorporated into a class?

: In my opinion, it will take much time to create these works using various tools. Giving as an assignment for reviewing the class would be better. Students can create their own works without time-pressure with a variety of ideas and thoughts. After collecting the students' work, teacher can produce a cartoon book(printed) or a long video-clip for their class and share with other classes or learners outside of the class.

#5. Corpora, Concordance, Collocations, Word Frequency

Checking out the following 3 sites and report back on how they could be used to inform materials development and classroom instruction.

 

1. Compleat lexical tutor http://www.lextutor.ca/:

- I would use this for my future grammar class material. I especially impressed by Grammar-Corpus section. After teaching certain grammar rule for a day, I will provide students Grammar-Corpus part. And then I will let my students try to correct the grammar sentences before they clicking the 'CONC' for checking native's right uses. When students finished their trying, they will check the answers all together in the class with the teacher. Teacher should pick out students' most frequent mistakes and errors among the answers and make students click the 'CONC' to confirm natives' answers. Teacher will explain on the answers.

2. Corpus of Contemporary American English http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/:

- When I first search through the 'Corpus .byu' I found that the website could be helpful for Undergraduates and Graduates rather than younger students. I could use this material with upper Undergraduates TOEFL beginner class. I will have my students to check Corpus for improving their usage of words in the writings also grammar as well. If the students finish their TOEFL writing assignment I would give them a feedback with one more homework searching 3 diffrent uses of certain words, pharses or clauses in different sentences. This will allow to students to have a wide range of vocabulary development for their English learning.

3. Wordle http://www.wordle.net/:

 - I think 'Wordle' is a very neat website for learning vocabulary. It gives students good looking and animated visual aids with variety of words. I could use 'Wordle' when I teach rhetorical writing to students. It will be possibly used warming up for the class or after the class to sum up. I can paste a text related that day's topic and show it to students. And then make them brainstorimg with those words for their writing. Or, after studnets' rhetorical writing they can paste their work in Wordle to sum up with the key words and the frequently used words. Also, Wordle work can be used as their writing's front cover page.