ESL Pods

There are tons of podcasts on ESL Pods for English learners.

The podcasts are about different topics such as travel, business, daily life, entertainment, etc. The one I reviewed is called ESL Podcast 938 – Learning to Ride the Subway. This podcast is organized by a brief introduction, a dialogue, an illustration for information in the dialogue such as vocabulary and concepts. At last, the podcast ends with the dialogue appears at the beginning in a normal speed. The speakers talk slowly enough so that they can make sure ESL learners can listen clearly and understand better. I could use this podcast for teaching vocabulary in context. Because the dialogue includes target vocabulary for taking a ride of the subway, such as transfer, line, local train, fare, etc. The speaker usually introduces a new vocabulary by first repeating the sentence in which the word occurs. After that he will spell it out slowly, then gives definition, which is followed by more explanation related to speaker’s personal experience. ESL learners will learn a word in a context, so they have a good grasp on its meaning. By learning a word’s form, meaning and use, ESL learners can use the vocabulary in a proper situation.

ePal

    The online community ePal provides a great learning platform for people from all over the world to share their work, ideas, projects and everything. The projects are not only about language learning but also about math, science, art and music.

  One project is designed to invite students from all over the world to discuss natural disasters. Students with their ePals discuss how the natural disasters, say hurricane, form, how people react, and how to deal with it. After their exploration, they will produce a presentation and teach others about this natural disaster.

   As for language teachers, ePal is beneficial for teaching language and arranging activities. The project that I like the most is one of the tasks in the Student Speak Video Series: I’m a global citizen. In this task, the students are asked to make a video to define global citizen based on their own understanding. When giving the direction of this task, its generator first includes his/her thoughts in defining a global citizen, such as someone who understands the interconnectedness of the word, who believes in responsible stewardship of the environment, who has a respect for human rights and cares about injustice, and who promotes peaceful conflict resolution. To prevent the video resulting in any other forms, the sample video as a demonstration and the guidelines are presented. One of the reasons that I love this project is the pool of ideas towards a topic. Students with different cultural and educational background bring their unique interpretations to share. By reviewing other’s video, they will sense the cultural diversity, make friends and learn from each other. Another reason is that it also helps to practice critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Besides learning and practicing using English, they could put their English learning in authentic contexts.

Tell us about your story

The forms of storytelling are varied from traditional oral narratives from up-to-date storytelling via interactive media or digital tools and technologies, which is also called digital storytelling. According to Wikipedia, digital storytelling refers to "a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their life story". An effective digital storytelling incorporates elements of text, video, audio, music and pictures, and can be interactive.

The digital storytelling is also pedagogically applicable. It is a powerful tool for instruction and consolidation of course content for teachers. Educational Uses of Digital Storytelling suggests that teachers could use it to present new materials by creating new stories, and, in so doing, to motivate students in engaging learning activities and exploring new ideas and topics. In addition, since some of the teachers may find it is difficult to perfectly integrating multi-media into their instruction, storytelling is a good way of consolidating course content by making abstract concepts more concrete and by involving students into discussion. Besides, digital storytelling can be an effective learning tool for students. Through creating their own story, students will develop communication skills such as to “organize their ideas, ask questions, express opinions, and construct narratives”. What’s more, they will gain valuable experience by researching a topic and then choosing a particular point of view. Also, a collaboration work on digital storytelling provides a platform for students to learn learning styles from each other and to share learning resources.

Except for the pedagogical means to use digital storytelling mentioned above, it also benefits me in my future teaching. Firstly, it is a pool of cultures that students share with each other. Students, through first person narrative, would identify salient features from their own cultures, arrange materials at hand, tell their story and demonstrate to others. In the storytelling process, students’ cultural identities are gradually established; by being exposed in dynamic culture contexts, students will experience authentic cultures in this way. Secondly, digital storytelling is used as a reflection of students’ learning experience. When students are asked to think about their identities as language learners, they are required to trace back what they did to contribute to language learning process. In doing so, teachers and students will gain a knowledge of their cognitive development in language area, which enables teachers to provide feedback for their future learning and allows students to see personal ownership and accomplishment.

Gamify your language teaching process!

The term, gamification, according to “7 Things You Should Know About Gamification”, is defined as “the application of game elements in non-gaming situations, often to motivate or influence behavior.” In language teaching, the teacher uses games as pedagogical tools to achieve teaching objective. The games are engrossing enough to attract students in order to facilitate their learning process. By developing intrinsic motivation, gamification provides a systematic medium to maximize language-learning efficiency.

I never thought that games could be educational, so I started trying an “escape the room game”, named The Heart of Tota. I tried to finish it for a long time, continually clicking every single object and hoping a little progress. At last, I have to resort to its walkthrough, but at that time I lost all my patience and was exhausted. Because there is not too much vocabulary involved to finish this game, I started to think about other language learning objectives, such as communication using the target language. I would use pair work in finishing the game of this kind. By interacting with each other in target

languages, students would solve the mysterious problem cooperatively. They will scaffold and negotiate to share their ideas and the teacher, as an expert, will provide graduated hints, within their flow or comfortable zone, as defined in A Comparison of Computer Game and Language-LearningTask Design Using Flow Theory.  The major goal for students is to communicate as much as possible, so a walkthrough will not be provided explicitly. Only when they are stuck after adequate communications, the teacher would pinpoint where they are and present solutions based on its walkthrough.

The assessment of whether they have achieved the communicative objective could be impractical in that they could use body languages instead of discourse in their interactions. However, when the teacher’s advises are needed, they have to report where they are and what is the problem, by summarizing previous and current situation. In this way, the teacher could monitor their progresses in person.

Inspirations from Twitter for Teaching

How to monitor what students tweet about their assignments? How to follow each student’s thoughts and progresses, with thousands of tweets continually coming in?

Those questions are haunting me all these days since I was introduced the educational purpose of using Twitter. Fortunately, when I read Teach with Twitter? Read This! by Michelle Pacansky-Brock, I found the trick lies in using the hashtag, which is the easies and the least cumbersome way to track your students’ new tweets. Once the students are asked to add hashtag on related topic, the Twitter will automatically archive their interactions and engagements with their teachers.

Before studying 35 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom, I never think about useful ways to incorporate Twitter in classroom in that communications in classroom are through face-to-face interaction rather than through machines without actually talking to each other. However, it indeed casts some lights to my future teaching insights. Firstly, Twitter provides a platform for me to enhance learning outsides the classroom. Like what is proposed in the article, students could follow experts and thus communicate with them, which enabling the students to absorb practical and most current knowledge in related fields. In addition, they could share what they have gathered through those inspiring

communications to their classmates and/or followers. Secondly, it is a rather good tool to monitor students’ learning process. One advantage of using microblogging rather than normal blog is that microblogging appears less formal and more prompt. If the students find it is lengthy and tiresome to format blogs, they would love to tweet. As for teachers, they could get instant feedback of what they require students to do and what their problems and difficulties. Thus teachers could provide immediate suggestions to clear any possible obstacles for students.