That’s the term I’ve been looking for ever since I started toying with the front page of my website. I initially thought that it was navigation that I had to address, whilst now it is clear that it is web usability, or rather ways of designing it. Unfortunately, I am no artist, which means that I have to adopt the engineering ideal of website design at the expense of the artistic...
Is Teaching & Learning PURELY WEB 2.0-wise a Must?
| View | Upload your own A nice basic summary (in somewhat broken Russian, but that is not an issue, the content offsets this minor drawback) with a lot of unstated assumptions, though. The basic supposition is that the learners MUST do everything online, and the question that is unanswered is WHY they have to do so. What is the main reason for doing whatever task entirely online either solo or...
Quizzes on Opposite Adjectives, Verbs & Nouns
It has been a while since I last uploaded free interactive quizzes. This month I will try to make up for the long silence and add a few dozen interactive exercises. So let me invite you to try the brand new quizzes on opposite adjectives, verbs & nouns* (the latter are going to be available in mid-December). Each exercise consists of 10 pairs of antonyms. Your task is to match the pairs...
WHO is WHO in TESOL, CALL & Corpus Lingustics
Mark Davies Searchable Online Corpora Scott Thornbury A Dictionary of ELT Terms, Grammar, Discourse Analysis Ted Power Downloadable and printable worksheets & practical advice Jane & Dave Willis – Task-Based Learning – sample lesson plans Jack C. Richards Second Language Teaching, Error Analysis, Curriculum Development, Applied Linguistics Gavin Dudeney CALL, Second Life Susan...
What Learning Styles are There?
Here is a summary of Keng-Soon Soo’s article “Theory and Research: Learning Styles, Motivation, and the CALL Classroom”, published in Call Environments: Research, Practice and Critical Issues (1999) edited by Egbert & Hanson-Smith (There is a newer 2007 edition of this text available) Learning style refers to how students approach learning, not to how well they learn. (p...
Collaborative Editing Online: Available Tools
It is not only wikis and blogs that you can use collaboratively online. Now it is possible to create graphs and charts together, as well as regular text documents and tables. What you Need Tool to Adopt a graph or a chart Gliffy an online word processor and a spreadsheet application in one; you need to embed images and/or share a video GoogleDocs an online word processor compatible with Opera...
Web 2.0 in Education: Affordances
NB! Web 2.0 properties are moulded by user perceptions. The notion of the learner-context interface (Language Learning in Distance Education by Cynthia White, p 86, etc CLTL) places the individual learner’s capacity to construct an effective interface with target language* (TL) sources in the learning environment at the centre of distance education. * I guess any subject area could be...
Collaborative Learning Online: Principles and Guidelines
Quintessentially, in order for a collaborative task to succeed it is necessary to provide for the following: 1. The students in a group must perceive that they “sink or swim” together, that each member is responsible to and dependent on all the others, and that one cannot succeed unless everyone in the group succeeds. (I wonder how that can be reinforced in a real classroom setting...
Sample Collaborative Learning Tasks & Activities: Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning
Guided Reciprocal Peer Questioning The goal of this activity is to generate discussion among student groups about a specific topic or content area. Faculty conducts a brief (10-15 minutes) lecture on a topic or content area. Faculty may assign a reading or written assignment as well. Instructor then gives the students a set of generic question stems. Students work individually to write their own...
A Guide to EFL/ESL Exams and Levels
This is a table that provides a compact comparative overview of such EFL/ESL exams as FCE, CAE, CPE, IELTS & TOEFL.