Using Podcasts in ELL

As we know the internet audio-listening has greatly increased its popularity. Podcasts have been used for English learning purposes. I think that they mainly influence on the learners' listening, vocabulary and speaking skills.
I want to refer to a reasearch which was held in the University of South Carolina. The researchers examined the effects of using podcasts to improve pronunciation in SLL, and how students' attitudes changed toward pronunciation over the semester. The participants in this study were 12 learners of German and 10 learners of French. According to the statistical analysis there were no significant differences in the students' pronunciation from pre-test to post-test over time. Only french students had some improvements in their comprehensibility and accentedness. As for the extemporaneous tasks, students in both languages showed little improvement. This was mainly because of the students' concentrating more on the meaning than on the form.
To tell the truth the results mentioned above were a little surprising to me. I can say from my own experience that using podcasts can be very effective for english learning purposes, mainly in terms of improving listening and speaking skills. I felt the imrovement especially in my listening skills. It also directly affected on my pronunciation skills. I feel very comfortable in using podcasts for improving my linguistic skills. While practicing my pronunciation I tried to concentrate more on the form than on the meaning. Of course understanding the meaning is the first stage, but later I concentrated more on the form by doing a lot of repititions and self-recordings. So, one can, for sure, benefit from using podcasts for improving the linguistic skills.

Using Blogging and Microblogging in ELL

My love and interest increases towards blogging and microblogging day by day. This process of learning is really more engaging, meaningful and interesting for me. I think that I will be able to implement both the blogging and microblogging in language teaching processes. I think that learning with blogs can be used beginning from the intermediate high level students, because they are more able to recognize for what purposes blogs are going to be used. It would be more convenient to use blogging in computer labs than in usual classrooms. When introducing the necessity of using blogs to my students I would point out the following things: that blogs are more useful than usual notebooks, because in this case the blogger has more responsibility in what he/she is writing, because it is going to be shared with a wide audience. Besides, blogging is more interactive, where you don't only write for yourself and your teacher, but also for the community you are in. Moreover, the students can develop different computer skills by using blogs. So, in their blogs students would refer to their daily lessons, would write summaries of different texts, would comment on other's blogs, etc.
What refers to twitter, I would suggest my students to use it in the case they would like to, which would be for short tweets, basically refering to the difficulties in understanding something, or, vice versa, to something which they liked, and also could make some suggestions. Microblogging, though, doesn't have to be about the learning materials necessarily. It may be about the students' daily plans and other casual things. But, anyway, this is a way of using the language, and also a way of interacting and communicating by that language. So, in my opinion, both blogging and microblogging create an environment for active learning.
Evaluation is an important aspect for both the teacher and the students. I would not grade the students for blogging and microblogging, but I would provide some comments on the content, writing accuracy and fluency, lexical complexity and other linguistic aspects.
I think that there would also be some challanges for the students who are a little behind the others in terms of their knowledge and abilities. For example, they might be shy or might feel not confident to share their piece of writing with a wide audience. For this case my suggestion is to ask those students to actively read the posts of their friends, and to make their first steps by leaving comments on their posts, thus getting used to the process. They could also show their piece of writing to the teacher before posting it, till they would be able to do it by themselves.

Developing Writing Fluency and Lexical Complexity with Blogs.

Nowadays blogging is becoming a very essential tool for alternative assessment and for diary writing. In my previous posts I have mentioned some of the main skills that blogs can develop, like critical reading and thinking, sense of ownership, computer skills, etc. Now I want to add two other important skills which blogs can develop: the writing fluency and lexical complexity.
There has been conducted research in a university in Japan. The researchers integrated the university language learners into a seven-day intensive English course. The students' language proficiency level was low and the aim of the researchers was to find out their achievement in writing blog entries in terms of writing fluency and lexical complexity. So, the researchers describe the writing fluency by comparing the number of words and word frequency levels. While the lexical complexity is described by the difficulty level of words based on the frequency with which they normally occur in written English. During the research the students increased their critical reading skills dramatically, as they were not only writing their own blogs, but also they were reading the other students' blogs. After synthesizing and analyzing the blog entries of their classmates,they were actively commenting on each other;s blogs, thus making the process become more authentic.
Finally, the students' blog entries showed an overall increase both in their writing fluency and lexical complexity skills. According to the research results, the average word count for student email postings to the class blog showed an increase of nearly 350% (on the first day 31.5 words, and by the end of the program 121.9 words.). The lexical complexity level of the blog entries also increased. The words that were considered to be difficult for the students started to occur more frequently in the texts.
We can conclude that the blogs work very effectively in the language teaching and learning process. It is evident from both the researches done, and from our own experience of working with blogs as MA TEFL students. Now I'm thinking of some strategies which will help me to use blogs for language teaching and learning purposes.

About Will Richardson's "Weblogs in School".

My own perception of using blogs in schools is very positive, and reading about Will Richardson’s ideas about blogging in school was very helpful for me as a TEFL professional. In my opinion weblogs affect directly on the learners’ motivation and engagement. This interactional type of learning process develops a sense of ownership, critical thinking, good reading and writing skills.

According to Will Richardson, the usage of blogs in schools enhances better learning, besides blogs can serve as an archive for collecting your ideas and later coming back to them, if needed. He states that it has a special influence on teaching reading and writing skills. When they write they know that it  is going to be available not only to their teachers, but to a wide audience. Another important thing is that we should teach the learners read before writing. They should read different sources, analyze, synthesize, criticize, and then write their own posts.

Blogging also fosters collaboration between the learners. They not only learn from the sources they read or listen, but also learn from their peers, from other people’s reflections.

According to Richardson, the digital world of blogs differs from podcasts, wikis, videos, etc, because it makes the learners become network creators and users.

In future I will use teaching through blogs, because I can feel from my own experience, that it makes the learning process interactive, meaningful, modern, helpful for a wider community. I would use that for them to reflect on the activities done in the classroom, also on the homework assignments. Besides, there has been done a research in the EEC program of AUA, according to which teaching via weblogs is effective and promising.

For more information please visit this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_5F_zcOJ3o

Reflection on the connections between the three sources

       After watching all the videos I realized that there is something important, which connects all the three sources together: that is the technology.
       According to Sugata Mitra's "A Hole in the wall" project, interest in children has a great role in the learning process. That we could clearly see in all the videos of Digital Youth Portraits. All the teenagers were interested in what can technologies do and how it can help them become what they want to become. I think that interest is the first prerequisite of going deep into the world of learning through technologies. Besides, Sugata Mitra mentions that children in groups can self-instruct themselves. He says that even the language is not a barrier. If they have a computer, they can learn themselves, but it had to be in groups. The same picture was seen in the Digital Youth Portraits, where children in groups are powerful and they can learn, create together through technologies, and teach one another.
        According to Thomas Friedman's "The world is flat" book, when the world becomes flat, the relationships between people becomes horizontal, and, as a result they learn how to collaborate. So they become connected again through technologies, which was again the main theme of the other two sources.                  So, technologies are not only tools for getting information, connecting with others and for teaching and learning, but they have also become the part of our lifestyle.

             

About the flatteners discussed in Thomas Friedman's book "The World is Flat".

The book “The World is Flat’’ describes the brief history of the 21^st century. It discusses such questions as why is the Earth becoming flat, what are its consequences, the challenges it causes to countries, etc. The book has three chapters, where the 1^st chapter discusses globalization and the three main ways by which it is expressed. The 2^nd chapter talks about the 10 flatteners, which I will expand on, and the 3^rd chapter is about the Triple Convergence.

I will focus on the 2^nd chapter and will talk about those 3 flatteners, which I find the most amazing. The first flattener discussed by Thomas Friedman is the collapse of the Berlin Wall. In my opinion, this is a very good example for understanding the power of human connectivity. The wall, that came down resulted in the collaboration of the western and eastern policies. And, as a result, windows came up which became good ways of communication between the two sides. I think that this is a very good example of a flattener, because when there is a wall between two sides, then the interconnection between them is vertical, i.e. they have different ideologies, by which each tries to rule the other. But when there are windows instead of the high wall, then the connection is horizontal, which means that they already have one world which is flat, and where people communicate, collaborate, work, create and do everything together and together they become a part of the flat world. The case of the Berlin wall is only one example of such kind of flattener, when due to a revolution people unite and create a united world. Such kind of things happened in different parts of the world during different eras.

The next flattener discussed by Friedman I find the most global one, which can be considered the main basis of globalization. That flattener was the Netscape, which gave the Internet browser, and which became accessible for all the people all over the world. That really made the world from big into tiny, i.e. made it flat, again from the point of view of the globalization. So, when the internet is interconnected in all over the world, it means that we have become very close to each other, irrespectable of the distance.

The 3^rd type of flattener that is very significant is the “Steroids”, which includes the wireless devices, such as mobile phones, I-pads, instant messaging, also the voice and visuals through the internet, etc. Thus, anytime, from anywhere we can connect to people in different parts of the world.

However, I disagree that the world has become completely flat. Maybe that could happen in future, but still there are countries where the usage of the internet is restricted, like in Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Turkmenistan, etc. Though, maybe these countries undergo globalization through different revolutions or habits, but not through the technologies. So, in my opinion, the world cannot be absolutely flat.

This idea has some implications for teaching and learning. I think that this is mainly related to the technologies as a flattener. E.g. through the internet a lot of people do distant learning, besides they get the information they want, and organize their self-learning process. Thus, it has a lot to do with the teaching/learning process.

             

Reflection on Digital Youth Portraits.

           While watching the digital youth portraits, the first thing that came to my mind was the difference of the learning opportunities of my generation and that of those teenagers. I realized both the noticeable progress of the technology and its power in the learning process. It has already become the inseparable part of both their learning process and their life in general, and they have the opportunity to learn in a very communicative and interactive environment. One of the striking things in those videos was that the children know exactly for what they use the digital technologies, such as social media, networks, digital videos and games, mobile technologies, computers, etc. For example, they can use them to create their own websites, or heroes for games, etc., thus using all their efforts, problem solving skills, creativity, imagination, etc.

           The stories about the digital youth portraits teach us a lot about the modern technologies, which automatically makes us think about the ways of using them in the TEFL-related fields.

           The videos show that children are very self-organized. In teams they become powerful, and they can search, learn from each other, help each other, analyze, and create by themselves. They only need some guidance and monitoring. They don’t just search, but they want to use what they search for, and they want to be creative. And all this is done through the digital world of technologies. The technologies provide a combination of texts, the visual and the oral, which leads to meaningful learning. One of the teenagers mentioned that the virtual community, where they communicate, is their second life, and it serves as a platform for them to learn social skills, and, of course, future work skills. So, they know how the technologies are going to help them in their future work, which is, of course, very creditable. I also want to mention about the educational games, which give the children problem solving skills. They do not just click, but they also use their mind and make things their own way.Finally, technology is more than a tool. It is the essential component of everyday life.
          As TEFL professionals in Armenia, we should try to integrate new technologies in the teaching and learning process as much as we can, because they really make the learning process meaningful and real. I think that we can do that, because we have a lot of educational centers which are provided with new technologies. We, as teachers, should guide the learners to discover the world of digital technologies and the ways it helps their learning.