a CALL for assistance in language learning

Computer - Assisted Language Learning is a good method of helping our students to succeed in learning a foreign language. It is well-known that "computers play a crutial role" in people's life. Nowadays, people can hardly imagine how life would be without computers. The learners of the new generation are born in this high tech environment and are, as Georgia calls them, "digital natives". Although, far from being a digital native myself, I have to keep pace with my students so that I don't lose them in the endless labyrinth of links, and, instead, guide their search.

I liked what CALL softwares can offer now to improve namely oral skills. I think that the fact that they can be used at home, thus, making the student feel comfortable and at ease. He / She doesn't have to hurry and can practice as long as they please. I also liked the fact that the computer with such a program can give feedback, moreover, it can simulate a dialogue.

However, I would say that it is better for the mechanical aspect rather than meaningful aspect of spoken language competence. And even in the first case, "there is still some inaccuracy in speech recognition" [Gong 2002: 4]. Concerning this tiny drawback, I have come across a video on youtube. Probably you have seen it as well. Definitely things are exaggerated here, but overstatement is a strategy creating humor :)

I hope nobody will get offended. It is just for laugh.

It's sooooooo delicious to have a delicious!!!

I just want to share my excitement over having a delicious storage of useful links. This is absolutly fantastic. http://www.delicious.com/vicky_c

As a matter of fact, I was thinking of using netvibes, but when I accessed netvibes I realized that it did not save links, you can only place there the widgets. Thus, I saw that I couldn't store the links I wanted as there were no widgets for them. If you are interested in it you could go to http://www.netvibes.com/en and compare it with delicious. Once again, it is different. In my opinion delicious is better. But netvides has its advantages as well.

S.O.S.

I know that SOS is just a way of signaling when somebody is in danger and needs help. I also know that the letters themsleves do not stand for anything, they just conventionally render the Morse code distress signal.

Nowadays, while searching the internet one might get distressed, too. Apart from useful inofrmation, the internet unfortunately contains a lot of garbage as well. That is why the specific search engines that are bound to redirect you to the links you might need are great time savers.

I would say that in my case, S.O.S. is actually an acronym of Specific Online Search.First of all, I would like to tell that google.com is the best search engine in my opinion. Whenever I google something I usually like what I get as a result. Besides, google has great Specialized Search, my favorite is google scholar.

Yet, it is good to be even more presice in your search. For this you need to know:

1. what you are looking for;
2. where exactly you can find this information;
3. which is the best search engine that will help you.

I have given the list from noodles to my students and they really liked it and found it very useful. http://www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html

What I am happy about is the fact that they will not go only to wikipedia now. I don't say that it is a bad site, just all the class, as a rule, comes with some information taken from that site. Now, there'll be more diversity. I hope.

Writing Objectives

I have always thought that writing objectives is not that difficult. These are statements that would signal out the main purposes of the lesson. It is what the teacher plans his / her students to be able to do by the end of the lesson. The teacher predicts in a way what skills his / her students will aquire (or reinforce) after a particular subject have been dwelt upon. I have to admit that I was a bit wrong.

The first thing I did was to look up the definition for "objective" in the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (3rd edition, 2002). I discovered that what I was actually doing was writing general objectives, i.e. I was describing aims "in very general terms". This works for objectives written in a much boarder sense when one is not specific. Whereas, there should be other objectives, "specific objectives" which are "more detailed descriptions of exactly what a learner is expected to be able to do at the end of a period of instruction" [Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 370]. In my opinion, the first corresponds to the term "goal", while the second to "learning objective".

Afterwards, I examined the various ways of writing a good learning objective. As the objective stands for the teacher's instructional intention, it should be stated clearly, just like in any other type of communication. As a matter of fact, I liked Dr. Bob Kizlik's idea: "The purpose of a learning objective is to communicate" [www.adprima.com/objectives.htm]. Thus, the learning objective is the means by which the teacher communicates his / her intentions to all the people who are interested in it.

The teaching process, as part of the communicative network involves several constituents. There's a sender [Teacher], receiver(s) [Student(s)], a specific context [Classroom] and an intention that governs this interaction [the learning objective].

Dr. Bob Kizlik speaks of three parts that make a good learning objective: 

1. the conditions (a statement thet describes the conditions under which the behavior is to be performed);
2. behavioral verb (an action word that connotes an observable student behavior);
3. criteria (a statement that specifies how well the student must perform the behavior).

[www.adprima.com/objectives.htm]

This model resembles the ABCD model, there's only A missing from the above pattern. I think that the ABCD model is better, because it is very easy to remeber (this was done on purpose, as a rule the condition precedes the audience). This model should become the ABC of writing a clear objective.

A - audience - Who?

B - behavior - What?

C - condition - How?

D - degree - How well?

[http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/learningdesign/objectives/writingobjectives/]

I also liked the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy, which I think is extremely useful. I knew about it, but I mostly used it when I was telling my students what to do in exercises, test-papers, or other assignments.

The information I found is very useful. It is good that we were given examples of how to write good learning objectives. I liked the Examples of Activities: English Language Arts [www.adprima.com/examples.htm]

Hello everybody!

I would like my first post to contain Emily Dickinson's poem:

This is my letter to the world,
That never wrote to me,--
The simple news that Nature told,
With tender majesty.
Her message is committed
To hands I cannot see;
For love of her, sweet countrymen,
Judge tenderly of me! 

If I am allowed I will paraphrase the great American poet and say that this is my first post to the e-world that hasn't answered to me yet. I have patience enough to wait for their answers full of constructive criticism, just, for love of English, sweet Webskills e-Teacher Participants, judge tenderly of me.

I can't wait to share and be part of this e-sharing community. So far I have received enormous pleasure in accomplishing the tasks for Week 1. 

I am extremely happy to have the possibility to 'meet' people from around the globe and get to know their opinions on teaching.