Monday, April 29, 2013
Week 15--In Class Activity
Taichi and I have checked Mixxer site and we have created an account. Sine both of us know a little bit of Japanese, we found a friend who is a native Japanese speaker and said "good afternoon" in Japanese to the person. It will be a good website for language learners to make friends of native speakers of the language they want to learn. Also, it can help language learners to improve their writing proficiency by chatting with native speakers of target language.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Week 13 Reflection--Computer-Based Language Testing
We have discused how we can use computer in teaching language. Computers are widely used in testing language these days. For example, TOEFL Ibt is a computer-based test, testers has to complete their tests in the conputer lab. The advantage of using computer in testing language are that it is easier to grade the test. The organizations donot need to worry about using people to grade the tests. For listening and reading part, they can use computer to grade, and paople will only grade on the speaking and writing parts, this can definitely save a lot of time. Also, it is convenient for the testers because typing is usually faster than writing.
There are also disadvantages as well. For example, the computer may stop working sometimes, that is inconvenient to the testers and also the organizations that provide the test. Some test takers may not familiar with computer skills, so the typing speed will directly effect the grade on the test.
Though there are advantages and disadvantages, it is a good idea to use technology in testing along with the social progress and human development.
There are also disadvantages as well. For example, the computer may stop working sometimes, that is inconvenient to the testers and also the organizations that provide the test. Some test takers may not familiar with computer skills, so the typing speed will directly effect the grade on the test.
Though there are advantages and disadvantages, it is a good idea to use technology in testing along with the social progress and human development.
Week 12 Activity
Chinese culture and language reading and writing class
Cynthia Ahlers, Taichi Hardiman, Hongbo Zhu
Ask Chinese partner:
- PURPOSE:
- Chinese culture and language reading and writing class
- Spring Festival, Celebration, Family, Traditions, and Expectations
- Email pen pals (Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication - ACMC) that will include Chinese language characters and Chinese culture
- LEVEL OF STUDENTS:
- High-intermediate level Chinese as a Second Language
- American 11-13-year-olds
- END PRODUCT:
- The students will get more out of the culture
- ACCOUNTABILITY:
- Write down the answers to all of the questions in Chinese, then e-mail it to the teacher for credit
Ask Chinese partner:
SPRING FESTIVAL AND CELEBRATIONS
How do you celebrate Spring Festival?
What clothes do you wear to celebrate?
What kind of music is played to enhance the festivities?
How do you decorate your room during this time of year?
What kind of food do you eat when you celebrate?
FAMILY AND TRADITIONS
How many people are in your family?
Do you have aunts, uncles, and grandparents?
How do you celebrate your birthday?
Could you send an attachment photo of your family?
Do you look like your father or your mother?
What was your favorite gift you got for your birthday last year?
EXPECTATIONS
When did you start learning a second language?
What is your second language?
What activities do you do on your spare time?
Do you play a musical instrument?
Do you play sports?
Do you want to go to university?
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Week 12 Reflection-----Teaching Culture Through CALL
It is important to teach the culture behind the language as language teachers. Teachers can use a lot of tools to help them achieve their yeaching goals. When I taught Chinese, I will refer my students to certain website to learn certain Chinese traditional festivals and cultures.
For example, when I taught the Spring Festival, I will ask my students to go online to find answers for the following questions:
1. When is the Spring Festival?
2. What color do people wear?
3. What kind of clothes do people wear?
4. What food do people eat?
5. What kind of special things do people do?
By checking online and answering all the questions by themselves, students will have a deep memory of the Spring Festivsl. After this, I will ask them to post their answers to their blogs in Chinese, in thia way, I can make sure that they really understand the culture.
For example, when I taught the Spring Festival, I will ask my students to go online to find answers for the following questions:
1. When is the Spring Festival?
2. What color do people wear?
3. What kind of clothes do people wear?
4. What food do people eat?
5. What kind of special things do people do?
By checking online and answering all the questions by themselves, students will have a deep memory of the Spring Festivsl. After this, I will ask them to post their answers to their blogs in Chinese, in thia way, I can make sure that they really understand the culture.
Week 11--Reflection Writing and Grammar
There are some online tools that can be used in teaching writing. Socu as purdue website, writing teachers can guide students to go to this website to check MLA or APA format. Blogs and BBlearn are also good tools to ues in teaching writing. Students can post their writing assignment or paragraphs, other students and the teacher can give feedback through these tools. MicroWord can also be used to provide students feedback by teachers. All these tools are really simple and easy to use.
As for teaching grammar, studnts can check COCA website, fron this website, students can check information of words combination as which word go with certain prepositions, which word modifies another word.
As language teachers, it will be effective to cooperate these usefuls teaching tools into teaching.
As for teaching grammar, studnts can check COCA website, fron this website, students can check information of words combination as which word go with certain prepositions, which word modifies another word.
As language teachers, it will be effective to cooperate these usefuls teaching tools into teaching.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Material Development 2
A Lesson Plan for Program of Intensive English,
Level 2 reading and writing
Book used: Northstar 2
Written by: Hongbo Zhu
Course Objectives this lesson will address:
1.
Read passages from different media
(website, newspaper column, magazine article, etc.) independently both in class
and out of class.
2.
Recognize and understand main idea in
reading.
3.
Distinguish between a main idea and detail.
4.
Develop targeted vocabulary (arts,
business, fashion, family, friendship).
5.
Write simple sentences and compound
sentences.
6.
Read paragraphs fluently by increasing
speed, recognizing sight words, and pacing.
Pre-lesson Inventory
Ø Things to bring to class:
Ø Equipment:
Ø Things to tell students:
1. Free reading time
Ø Write objectives/agenda/HW on board:
1. Key
Activity 1: Extensive Reading/Free Writing (20 min.)
Purpose: To introduce student’s to the daily practice
of extensive reading and free writing.
Procedure:
1.
Greet Ss and take
attendance.
2.
Tell students to
take out their books and read silently for ten minutes.
3.
Remind students
who are late that they will not receive credit for their reading.
4.
Check to see
which students have their books and mark grades accordingly.
5.
Have students
read for ten minutes.
6.
After ten
minutes, pass out response
prompt for today’s reading and give students ten minutes to complete it.
Transition: So before we get back to our textbooks, I want to talk a little bit
about how to write a paragraph.
Parts of a Paragraph (30
min.)
Purpose: For Ss to understand how to synthesize
information into a paragraph.
Procedure: Present new information, practice, comprehension check
1.
Organize Ss into
5 different groups.
2.
Pass out a sentence
on a strip of paper to each group (MAKE ONE FOR DEMONSTRATION AND TWO MORE FOR
PRACTICE). These sentences go together
to form a paragraph.
3.
Explain to Ss
that they will work together to put the sentences in the right order so that
they form a paragraph. Model this by
pretending to be in one of the groups and asking to hear what another group has
as a sentence. Then pretend to make a
decision about whether your sentence should go before or after that sentence. It will be important for Ss to understand
that they need to find the first sentence and work from there. Perhaps you should go to the group with that
first sentence and model that you assume that that is the first sentence of the
paragraph.
4.
Give Ss 10
minutes to cooperate and create the class paragraph.
5.
Get the paragraph
in order from Ss and compare their paragraph to the original paragraph (display
this on the TV for Ss to see)
Transition: Now, let's take just a couple of minutes and look at the reading,
then we’ll look at vocabulary. Turn to page 6. Here is a reading about
"The Friendship Page."
Activity 2: Focus on Reading (NS pg. 5) (10
min)
Purpose: To help
build strategies for more fluent reading by Ss.
Procedure: Activating
Background knowledge, presentation of new information, practice.
Have Ss turn to page 5
1.
Go over the top
half of the page to help Ss look for clues about “Friendship
Page”
2.
Read directions
for exercise 1 on page 5 aloud and have students complete the exercise.
3.
Go over your own
process of prediction to model how you predict as a pre-reading strategy and to
start students off in the right direction.
After
10 minutes’ break
Transition: Now, getting back to our textbook: part of learning about any
subject is learning how to talk about that subject using correct
vocabulary. This will help to build a
more meaningful vocabulary for Ss. Before
our break, we will use prediction again to help us understand the reading we
will do after break.
Activity 1:
Background and Vocabulary (20 min.)
Purpose: To learn target vocabulary in context.
Procedure: Presentation
of new information, practice, comprehension check.
1.
Have Ss turn to
p.3 and ask Ss to read the sentences paying attention to the boldfaced
words.
2.
Then using
context, have them choose the best definition for each boldfaced word.
3.
Model the first
exercise or two to make sure Ss understand the directions. Circulate to offer assistance if necessary. Ss can use print dictionaries. (Also write
all bold words on the board for next activity)
4.
Go over the
answers as a class.
5.
Take the
opportunity to show Ss how to use context clues in the sentences to understand
the meaning of the vocabulary item.
For
example, for item 1(Bronwyn wants to help her community
in Melbourne. She wants to help people
in other countries, too.), the word too indicates
the second sentence is another example of something appearing earlier. Wants to help appears
in both sentences. Students can deduce community and people in other countries are referring to each other. Then looking at the examples, students can
choose the best answer from the choices given.
Also, Ss can replace the boldfaced word with the choices given; only one
makes sense.
Transition: You can see that when you are reading, there are clues in the
sentence for what each word means. This
skill of using surrounding words in a sentence to find the meaning of a word
will help you to become a better reader.
Activity 4: Reading for Main Ideas (NS pg. 7) (10
min)
Purpose: Students will be able to
read the text in given time and get the gist of the text.
Procedure: Presentation
of new information, practice, comprehension check
•
Give students 3
min to go over the text and find out the main idea. (individual work)
•
Make sure they
circle two answers for the question #1 and #2
•
Ask students how
they came up with the answers and let them underline the part of the text where
the answers came from. (Students can work in pairs to compare the underlined
parts.)
•
Go through the
answers together, relating with the key words like "friendly,"
"peace," "friendship," "meet," "safe,"
"volunteers," "personal" etc.
Transition: Okay, now let’s look at the
writing you guys did for me yesterday.
Short Writing Task 1 Feedback (15 minutes):
Purpose: to improve
students writing with targeted, specific feedback.
Procedure:
1.
Before Class
starts:
a.
Share a Google
document with students and ask them to post their Short Writing 1 to the
document so we can review and share their writings all together by using the
computer and TA through Google doc.
b.
Select three of
the tasks at random and read carefully.
c.
Identify two to
three common language/grammar mistakes in the three samples.
d.
Go through all of
the student’s writings and correct those mistakes.
e.
Underline where
the mistakes are on Google document.
2.
In class
a.
Share students’
writing through Google document with underlined problem areas.
b.
Go through sample
sentences from students essays on board to show student mistakes.
c.
Have students try
to correct their own essays.
Back up activity (variable-time activity): free reading
Procedure(s): (sequence
as needed for activity)
•
Key
vocabulary
•
Building/Activating
Background Knowledge
•
Presentation
of New Information
•
Practice
•
Apply
•
Comprehension
check
Technologies used:
1.
TV
(Paragraph combination)
I think that the PIE should have
uniforms.
This is because the students at PIE have
bad clothes.
They wear loose pants and t-shirts
everyday.
These clothes are not scholarly and look
bad.
When
I was 16 years old, I wanted to help my community. People laughed! They said,
“You can’t help. You are too young!” But I didn’t listen to them.
I
was sure that friendship is important to everyone. So, in 1996, I started The
Friendship Page.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
Friendship Page has two goals. One goal is to make the internet friendlier. The
other goal is to bring more peace to the world. The Friendship Page is really
about “peace through friendship.”
Today,
20 volunteers help me with The Friendship Page. We all work hard, but we have a
lot of fun. We think our work is very important.
The
Friendship Page is very popular. More than 13,000 people in 190 countries visit
every day. That’s 4,700,000 people every year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
Friendship Page is friendly, free, fun, and easy to use. You can make new
friends. You can get advice about friendship. There are interesting pages with
songs, poems, quotes, jokes and more. You can also meet new and old friends in
the chat room.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
People
from 8 to 88 years old visit The Friendship Page. Post people are 13-34 years
old. Young people and old people can be friends. They can help each other and
learn a lot. Fifty-five percent are female, and 45 percent are male.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
Friendship Page is very safe. The volunteers watch the website carefully. They
want it to be safe for everyone, especially for young people. We talk to the
Australian police about Internet safety, too. On The Friendship Page, we do not
use our real names. There are also no personal e-mail addresses, no phone
numbers, and no personal pictures. Also, when you delete information from The
Friendship Page, no one can see it again. The information does not stay on the
Internet. This is not true of other websites like MySpace and Facebook.
If
you are interested in friendship please visit The Friendship Page at www.friendhship.com.au
Response Outline for Extensive Reading:
Outline
for Free Writing
The book I read today is called (Title of book)________ by (Author
of the book)_______. The book is about (Topic of the book)__________. I like
this book because (Reason 1)________ and (Reason 2)________. This book reminds
me of (Something from your life)________. I do not like this book because
(Reason 1)________ .I (would/would not) recommend this book to my
friends—I think they should (not) read it.
Example
The book I read today is called Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. The book
is about a police man in Bangkok. I like this book because there is a lot of
action and it is exciting. This book reminds me of the time I traveled in
Cambodia. I do not like this book because sometimes there is too much blood. I
would recommend this book to my friends.
The book I read today is called ______________________ by
_____________________. The book is about
_______________________. I like this
book because ______________________ and ________________________. This book makes me think about
__________________________. I do not like this book because
_____________________ .I (would/would
not) recommend this book to my friends.
Short Writing Task 1 Feedback:
i.
EXAMPLE: I want a sandwich.
II.
Sometimes, we want to right a sentence with TWO VERBS. One
way to write this sentence is using an INFINTIVE:
a. An Infinitive: SUBJECT +
VERB + to +VERB +OBJECT
III.
You must memorize which verbs are infinitives:
a. Some infinitive verbs are:
i.
Agree
ii.
Hope
iii.
Know how
iv.
Need
v.
Like
vi.
Promise
vii.
Want
viii.
Would like
IV.
DIRECTIONS: Use infinitive form of the word to complete each
sentence
i.
EXAMPLE:
1. I______________watch
moves. (like)
2. I like to watch movies
b. He __________________go to
the bank after class. (need)
c. I __________________help
her with her homework. (want)
d. The teacher
_________________teach the speaking class. (know how)
e. We________________go to
Mexico this weekend. (hope)
f.
My mother__________________send me pictures of my family.
(like)
g. I_____________________go
to the University after this semester. (would like)
1.
Now he live in Flagstaff.2. He likes to talk English, and cook and clean.
3. He like to all movies.
4. He from Saudi Arabia.
5. He likes to swimming.
6. He like to take rest.
7. He like to read and music and sport.
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