According to Mckay & Tom (Teaching Adult Second Language Learners, CUP, 1999, p. 26), working in groups helps students feel they are part of a community. They come to know each other as individuals & friends Pair- and groupwork serves an important pedagogical purpose, because it provides more opportunities for individuals to talk than does a teacher-fronted class, as well as less formal...
It looks like more and more language teaching is being done on the web. Let me summarize what online language teachers have on offer, what they do or could do in theory. I will list several examples from Curtis J. Bonk & Ke Zhang’s (2008) Empowering Online Learning, pp. 62-63. Types of resources & activities for online language learners online flashcards electronic dictionaries...
Heather McKay & Abigail Tom (1999, CUP, Teaching Adult Second Language Learners, pp. 21-22) suggest teachers differentiate among four types of mixed-ability activity. Unless the text is in quotation marks, it is my own interpretation. same input, same task What is different in this situation is the level of your students’ language proficiency. What makes it possible for the students to...
Does studying 1-to-1 qualify as pairwork? And is it necessarily teacher-centered and bad? Anyone?
Ian Forsyth (Teaching & Learning Materials & The Internet, 3rd edition, p. 135) defines interactivity as
emulating the traditional classroom
He lists the 5 Ts that cause interactivity to fail on the Internet (pp. 19 -23)
time
technology timid
territoriality on topics
training
truss – an infrastructure requirement
To begin with, I am not aware of any reliable statistics. I can only draw on my personal experience and summarize a number of related Google search results. It is obvious, I hope, that it is impossible to spend more than 3 clock hours talking without a break. I guess that’s the maximum. As for the minimum, an online lesson can be as long as a regular phone call, i.e. it can last for as...
Fun lovers are sure to appreciate this exemplary story
According to MacLachlan (1986) сited by E. L. Criswell (1989, pp 36-39) the following instructional techniques can help the teacher teach and the student learn: Explaining the benefits of the lesson to the student before or at the beginning of the lesson. Memory is increased when the student is paying attention. That’s logical though sometimes easier said than done. The authors do not...
Piaget (1964) cited by E. L. Criswell (1989, pp. 35-36) developed the theory that children grow intellectually in stages: From years 0 to 2, children explore their tiny environments, and through physical exploration, learn that objects exist and do not change from day to day. This is the sensorimotor stage. This is a period of motor action. The way I see it, the time can be successfully used for...
A digital story is a personal experience represented in narrative format. The script is amplified by including video, music, still-frame imagery, and the author’s voice. A digital story typically lasts for two to three minutes. Web 2.0: New Tools, New Schools p. 43 It must take ages to create such a story, but the idea is interesting anyways. I imagine the teacher has to provide a lot of...
