Here is the last post of the 5 Reading List.

Reading Reflection Day 7 

Writingmatrix: Connecting students with blogs, tags, and social networking

( Volume 11 Number 4, March 2008 by TESL-EJ, Taching English as a second or foreign language)

Vietnam has started using the Internet since November 1997. It is a new theme to most teachers and in fact many English teachers in Vietnam are ignorant of this field especially old teachers who are afraid of using the Internet because they are slow to type and sometimes most of them know little about technology. Anothing is that computers are not popular in most schools in Vietnam. Nowadays teachers’ life is better and the majority of teachers have a computers at home but they don’t know how to exploit it effectively. I think writingmatrix is a new way that teachers can utinise them in teaching English. 

Personnally, Writingmatrix is a wonderful tool because it helps teachers to connecting students with blogs, tags, and social networking. However, the concepts: blogs, tags, and social networking are strange and new to teachers in general and teachers in remote areas and the countryside in Vietnam.

The first thing to do is that teachers should attend a short course on using the Internet and get used to practicing writing blogs. They need to understand what tags are and how they are used purposely. After they know something about it they can use them in teaching writing by posting their writing to blogs community herein students in  specific groups. Here they can share everything from learning experience to life experience. They can write comments on others’ writings, know ideas from others. I still believe this is a new horizon to not only teachers but doctors, farmers and so on as well.

With a computer and a LAN, teachers can share writing in a school and with the world meaningfully. This must be a near future perpective of learning English and other lnguages as well.

VNU EFL537 Reading List

Readings page.

• Using Technology to Teach Reading Skills
• Using Technology to Teach Writing Skills
• Using Technology to Teach Speaking and Pronunciation Skills
• Using Technology to Teach Thinking Skills
• Using Technology to Teach Listening Skills
• Trends in Digital Media 2007, Elizabeth Hanson-Smith
• Blogging in the Language Classroom: It Doesn’t “Simply Happen”, Carla Arena
• Using Podcasts in the EFL Classroom, Anne Fox
• Language Learners & Computer Games: From Space Invaders to Second Life, Graham Stanley & Kyle Mawer
• Open Educational Resources and Practices, Leigh Blackall
• Writingmatrix: Connecting Students with Blogs, Tags, and Social Networking,Vance Stevens, Nelba Quintana, Rita Zeinstejer, Saša Sirk, Doris Molero & Carla Arena

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Using Technology to Teach Speaking and Pronunciation Skills

Speaking is a productive skill, before now teachers used to use audio-lingual method (ALM), total physical response (TPR), the natural approach, the silent way, and suggestopedia. Now most teachers in Vietnam use communicative language teaching (CLT) and the task-based approach. The question is that: Does technology helps students learn English?

The answer is YES. In speaking lessons, technology here means computers. They help me a lot in that you can use pictures of a given topic in pre-reading stage to ask questions. Students look at the pictures to discuss problems and give out their answer. This is useful because some topics need visual pictures to elicit them to speak. Another thing that computers help speaking skill is you can model a situation ( At the reception desk, a typical interview…by showing a Video clip so that students learn some body languages. Moreover, computers help much in teaching pronunciation. I use Learn English 4.1 and Learn English 8.1 software to support students with the pronunciation of English consonants and vowels. It seems that it works effectively with my students. They help students instruct the formats of Intonation, Phonetics and Stress. I use Pronunciation chart designed on Flash to show students the method of making sounds with a shape of a mouth and articulate parts of the mouth.

In short, technology is important and useful for teachers nowadays. If you use it as a supported tool the effects on students’ motivations are enormous.

Using Technology to Teach writing Skill

Writing is a productive skill. It is one of the fourth skills through English textbooks of all English books in Vietnam. However, It is applied to Primary and High school students. In Vietnam most tests are written ones and Ministry of Education and Training ( MOET) considers writing as sentence-level linguistic forms, a series of cognitive activities, such as brainstorming, drafting, peer- reviewing, and revising a and discourse structure.

In fact teachers and students still use the traditional method in language teaching and learning with little help from computers. The only thing that technology assists is that it provides students with the layout of a writing or vocabulary or structures shown by OHPs because some writing lessons at high school are too long and there are a lot of new words and when students finish writing in groups, teachers should show them on OHPs and students all can see and correct their lessons. This saves time much for teachers and students too. That’s why it helps students in this way. Technology helps students at universities a lot in taking part in forums hosted by their teachers to discuss some problem, and another way to respond to their teachers by using emails.

In conclusion, technology helps universities students more than students at primary and High school students. The teacher should know how to take advantages of PPt in their lessons.

Using Technology to Teach reading Skill

Reading is a receptive skill. So computers help students in many ways. With PPt. students are supplied with new vocabulary and structures in a most quick way and if a student is using a computer connected with the Internet, he/ she can looks up a new word in an online dictionary. However this way helps good students rather than bad students because it takes a lot of time to do that job whereas they can guess meanings of words in contexts. We can use some softwares to read any paragraph to check pronunciation. Also there are banks of English reading tests on the Internet that they can check their understanding.

Using Technology to Teach  listening Skill

Listening is a receptive skill. It requires as much help from computers as I can.I often use a radio cassette player to play the tapes, and disks  to demonstrate for the listening text. But when a radio doesn’t work, I’ll go to a computer or a television set.A computer assists me to show a video to do .I use chat voice so that I can listen to my students pnonunciaton.

This unit introduces the role of reading in SLA; teaching reading skills and the use of computers.

          According to the role of reading in SLA, there are 3 models of reading process: bottom-up, top-down and interactive models. In bottom-up model: words, grammar rules, longer discourse is taught in this process. In top-down model: the teacher makes predictions, test, confirms or revises those prediction (base on abilities, background knowledge….) and use a holistic approach to teach reading skill. In interactive model process: the students understand the meaning of the text and the interaction between the students and the text. In reading and schema theory process, schema theory is the function of background knowledge. There are 3 types of schemata on reading comprehension: formal schemata, content schemata and linguistic schemata. I think the content schemata plays the most important role in reading English.

According to the use of computers to teach reading skill. There are 6 component skills for reading fluency. They are automatic word recognition skills, vocabulary and structure knowledge, formal discourse structure knowledge, content/world background knowledge, synthesis and evaluation skills, metacognitive knowledge and skills. They talks about the importance of using computer to those component skills. They provide help to reading. Among the six component skills and knowledge areas. I think vocabulary and structure knowledge, synthesis and evaluation skills are the most to help my students become an efficent reader in English.

I think all above websites are useful and helpful for the teachers and students to teach and study English. But I found some sites of my interest.

Manythings.org  - ITESLJ Links  . In this website, there are many interesting things for ESL students. I like it very much. There are quizzes, word games, word puzzles, proverbs, slang expressions, anagrams, a random-sentence generator and other computer assisted language learning activities and much more. Even though I can also find some interesting things on this site. Example when I click site "pronunciation", I find a lot of useful things for teachers of English in my district because pronunciation is the most difficult of the language skills to teach. So teachers of English in my district face many challenges with pronunciation. When I enter this websites, I can find many things. Ex: minimal pairs practice and quizzes….

EFL537 Delicious Network  On this site, I can find many useful links for teachers and students. Eg: Articles, Audio, Bibliography, Blank Maps Blogs — Classroom and Teacher , Blogs – Educational Technology , Blogs — ESL , California etc.  and I find out a lot of helpful websites for teachers of English. Hopfully one day, I can provide for my teachers of English in my district all those.

The third day is very useful for us. We knew many new things. Although the internets’ link are slowly, but all of us worked hard from morning to 5p.m to complete professor’s assignments. Thanks our professor for what he has given for us. We are eager to continue learning the next day.