Task 4: ESL Website

These are the specifications of my website:

Language Focus: Grammar

Topic : Comparative Adjectives

Students : Lower form (especially for form 1)

Concept : Learning English with fun. Hence, that is the reason of me using colourful designs and some cartoons in it.






Here is my website:

http://englishwow.weebly.com/

Task 3: Web Based Lesson Plan

LEVEL                                              : Lower-intermediate Form 1

TIME                                                 : 7.40-8.40 am (1 hour)

AIMS/ LEARNING OBJECTIVES  : By the end of this lesson, the students will be able to
                                                            1. Construct sentences by using the correct adjectives to                                                                             describe the clothing. (Sentence level)
                                                            2. Present a paragraph of sentences by using the correct                                                                               adjectives to describe the clothing

TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS     : A Youtube video, online fashion game, and padlet

LANGUAGE FOCUS                        : Writing and speaking

PROCEDURE                                    :


Set Induction

1. The teacher greets the students.

2. The teacher plays a video of 'The Clothing Song' derived from Youtube page.

3. The teacher prompts the students to label and identify the clothes that she is wearing.

4. The teacher introduces the lesson of the day, 'My Fashion'



Development


Activity 1

1. The teacher draws a circle on the board with 3 air bubbles coming from it and in each write shirt/blouse, trousers/skirt and shoes.

2. The teacher goes to the game and demonstrates how to create the fashion for the cartoon in that website. If there is any student who already knows how to do it, the teacher asks that student to demonstrate (to give more chances for the students and to polish up their leadership skills).

3. The teacher prompts the students to construct sentences to describe the fashion.

For example: Anita is wearing yellow shirt, blue striped skirt and light green heels. 

Then, the teacher goes to padlet application and writes the sentence on the padlet.

4. The teacher selects a student (Student A) to design her own fashion and snap the picture of it (there is a button in the game to snap the picture) by using teacher’s computer (teacher’s computer is connected to the projector)

5. The teacher asks all students to log into the padlet, observe the fashion style and write a sentence to describe what the model is wearing.

6. The teacher asks Student A to choose another student to design the fashion. Step 5 is repeated until there are 3 sentences constructed.

7. The teacher checks the students’ sentences and gives feedback.


Activity 2

1. The teacher explains the instruction for the next activity:

- Imagine they are going to a birthday party with all the classmates.

- Design the fashion that they would wear to the event.

- When they are done designing, move around and take a look at other’s fashion. Then, describe styling.

- Construct the sentences on the padlet application to describe their fashion at the party. The description must contain the fashion of 3 people.

- For example: Yesterday Suraya’s birthday. I was wearing turquoise shirt, purple jeans and yellow slippers. Meanwhile, Hani was wearing blue blouse, white trousers and black shoes. On the other hand, Mei Lee was wearing yellow shirt, orange mini skirt and brown heels.

2. The teacher asks the students to go to the game website.

3. While the students are designing the fashion and describing it, the teacher monitors the class and gives them assistant when required.

4. The teacher asks the students to present their findings.

5. The teacher gives feedback.



Conclusion

1. The teacher recaps the lesson.

2. The teacher explains the importance of knowing how to identify the clothing and the vital features.

3. The teacher ends the lesson.

Hypertext and Hypermedia

HYPERMEDIA THE FOLLOWING POEM.


As I look to the sky I can clearly see
The glorious sun beaming down on me
The clouds go from thick to a whispy thin
To miss such a view is a terrible sin
As I look around this spectacular place I feel a smile take over my face
The fields of lush green grass are dotted
With beautiful wild flowers the bees have spotted
Busily flying from flower to flower
Pollinating before a shower
The distinctive red of a poppy field
To a tarmac strip they have to yield
The man-made pathway cuts through nature's canvas
Taking us to far flung places around us
To a built up concrete industrial machine
Where places like this are rarely seen
So whenever you visit the countryside
Take a few moments to put aside
So you will remember what you have seen
Before you return to the not so green.

Source: http://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/countryside-to-city#ixzz3ZyU7scFh Family Friend Poems

Task 2: Article Review

Title     : Teachers’ Stances on Cell Phones in the ESL Classroom: Toward a “Theoretical”
                Framework              
               http://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/viewFile/1177/997

Journal : Volume 31, Issue 2, 2014

Author : Jeff Brown

              He holds an MA and a PhD in philosophy and a postgraduate certificate in TESL.
              He teaches in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Humber College in      

              Toronto.

            This article is a concept article. The main idea of this article is the language teachers’ attitude towards the usage of cell phone in the language lesson. Based on the article, most of the teachers are digital immigrants while the students are digital natives (Brown, 2014).  Hence, many stances rise up  regarding this matter. For instance, Jarvis and Achilleos (2013) emphasize on the use of cell phones in second language learning, outside of the classroom. Moreover, they support the transformation of acronym from CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) into MALU (Mobile Assisted Language Learning). Therefore, there are various attitudes towards cell phone use in the classroom. There are 2 absolutist approaches that are strictly contrasting, which are prohibitionism and permissivism. The prohibitionists ban the use of cell phones during the language lesson because it is viewed as a disruption and impairment to learning. In contrast, permissivists grip and embolden the use of cell phones in the classroom because they may be convinced that the students, who are the digital natives, would boost up their potential as they are permitted to include the technology into the learning process. These two attitudes stand at the end of each pole, either strictly forbid or highly encourage the students to use cell phones in ESL classroom. On the other hand, in between of these 2 absolutist approaches, there are several other stances concerning the use of cell phone in ESL learning. They are critical exceptionalism, soft prohibitionism, moderate paternalisim, ostrichism, utilirianism, moderate permissivism and  critical exclusionism. Among the variety of stances, the one that I think most relatable and suitable to be used during my practicum session is moderate paternalism. This stance believes that the use of cell phone should be controlled to some degree and teacher should be able to quickly sense the appropriately intervene in order to lead the learning to achieve the classroom objectives. Considering my students, they are quite advanced with the use of cell phone and they would find it astonishing whenever I tried to instill a little bit of technology in the ESL classroom. However, in order to garner the learning objectives, the teacher should always be aware and spontaneous in order to react intelligently to any upcoming situation. 

            This article does interest me, especially throughout its very own title, which connects cell phone and language classroom. During my years of schooling, I had never encountered a situation whereby my teacher asked us to take out our cell phones and utilize it in the language classroom. Instead, we were asked to never bring cell phone to the classroom, as if it were the biggest crime in the act of humanity. Hence, the approaches that are up to certain degrees of encouraging and prohibiting cell phone use in the ESL classroom really appeal to me. The varieties of degrees are permissivism, critical exclusionism, moderate permissivism, utilitarianism, ostricism, moderate paternalism, soft prohibitionism, critical exceptionalism and prohibitionism. Nevertheless, I could not bring myself to agree that the article was soundly fashioned. Since this is a concept article, there is no respondents interviewed or researched. Hence, the results or data are just basically based on the previous theories or framework that were constructed by the preceding researchers. However, personally, I would think that this article would contribute more if it were to be a research article, in which there are respondents encompassed. This could be a great field to be studied, whereby a group of ESL teachers are interviewed and referred regarding their views and stands towards the use of cell phones in their ESL classroom. By acquiring this element, the readers could view the current stands of the educators, whether they think cell phone is a helping hand or the ominous object to be used in ESL classroom. On the other hand, undeniably, this article could convey a refreshed view in the teaching and learning of ESL, since the usage of cell phones in Malaysian ESL classroom could be considered as new and still very novel. Many teachers or educators are still in doubt, whether to allow the use of cell phones in ESL classroom or not. Going through my own practicum journey, some of the experienced teachers are dubious to use cell phone in ESL classroom because they are alarmed and afraid  that the students might get their attention strayed away due to the inclusion of cell phone in the ESL classroom. Hence, the varieties of framework provided by this article could broaden up the teachers’ way of looking at this matter and therefore, might inject the innovative teaching method and assist ESL learning. Henceforth, this article truly leaves a great implication in the teaching and learning of ESL in Malaysian context.

   

Task 1: ESL Website Evaluation

The website that is being evaluated: Learn English Today

Question 1

What does the website attempt to “teach”? Are exercises included in the website? What are the types of exercise included? Are there immediate feedbacks? Are there different levels of difficulty for different proficiency levels? 

Basically, this website is focusing on teaching English grammar, whereby all sorts of grammar notes and exercises are stacked into it. On the other hand, there are also vocabularies, idioms and proverbs included in this particular website. 

Exercise are included in the website, in which almost at the bottom of each note, there is a hyperlink whereby the visitors just have to click in order to retrieve it. The exercises are roughly categorized into 2, which are online and printable exercise. By giving both types of practices, it would be beneficial for the learners and also the educator, whereby the learners may utilize the questions and answer it online whereby immediate feedback will be given. Moreover, the educators can print out the questions to be used in the lesson. The feedback is provided instantly, like "CORRECT!", "TRY AGAIN!" and so on. In addition, the percentage of the correct answers are also equipped, to help the visitors to know their achievement for the time being. 

The choice of exercises

The multiple-choice exercise

The feedback that was given once answered correctly :)

There are none exercise that are based on the varied levels of difficulty for different proficiency levels. Hence, it is less favorable since the medley of proficiency levels could not be fully gratified.   

Question 2

What are the learners/visitors required to do with regards to learning the content of the website? 

In order to learn or explore the content of the website, the visitors just need to choose which category that they long to learn, either grammar, vocabulary, idioms or proverbs.  It does not necessitate any subscription or registration for access, which gives a huge opportunity for the visitors to guilelessly wield the content of the website. Following, in order to learn the content of the website,the visitors need to read the notes given in order to comprehend or to get better understanding of the topic (that perhaps has been learned somewhere else). Hence, to bulk up the knowledge, the learners can do some exercises provided at the end of each note. 

Question 3

While you are going through the website, does it remind you of anything you do in a classroom, or with a fellow classmate, or in self-study?

In term of content, the website truly reminds me of the activities that I did in the classroom, with my English teacher. My adored teacher usually initiated the lesson by asking us questions. Some could be in the form of pop quiz, analogous to the ones that are in the website. Moreover, we were required to write our idioms and paste it on the classroom wall weekly. Hence, idioms were a part of the English lesson, and so does the website, that also includes the variety of idiom and proverbs.

The list of idioms

On the other hand, technically, using the website as the medium is not an orthodox way of my learning because I learned English through chalk and talk method and via the students’ presentation or performance, hence hardly using any website as the tool. Thus, the methodology is unalike, but I would say, quite fascinating due to the easy-access and students-friendly whereby the learners just have to click at the particular topic that they are keen of, without poring over each page, like a book.

Question 4

Does the website present learners with something that cannot be done in a textbook/workbook? If yes, how so. 

The answer for this question could be both yes and no. Yes, because there are some topics that are not included in the textbook/workbook, such as the business English terms and some idioms. Moreover, the abundant exercises in the website is unrivaled by the traditional textbook/workbook that usually provides exercises or practices at the end of the topic or the chapter, which are not so many. Moreover, the immediate feedback given by the website could not be obtained via textbook/workbook. In order to get the feedback, the students need to wait for the teacher, or perhaps by turning to the end of the book, which takes quite a time.

Besides, the ‘no’ answer is derived through the reasoning based on the subject matter. Most of the topics encompassed are the topics that could be found in the textbook/workbook.

Question 5

Can you pinpoint some theories of language learning and/or teaching underlying the application? 

There are some theories of language and learning and teaching underlying this application.

The first one is Deductive Theory. As this website provides the information, mostly in the point-form, visitors would have to read over the material first, that might contain the rules of the language, preceding the exercise. Hence, that brings the deductive theory, whereby rules are introduced before the examples are given.

The rules are explained

Following, the next theory is Cognitive Theory. Since the knowledge materials presented are similar to the previous information that most probably learned through the classroom session, the visitors are aware of the gen gained. Therefore, they would be restructuring the input and output and blend them in together, as a newfangled renewed knowledge.

Moreover, Extrinsic Motivation is also provided via this application. As mentioned beforehand, right after the students answer the questions in the exercise segment, the feedback pops out. For example, if the answer given is correct, the “Correct! J” statement will show up. Hence, indirectly, this will motivate the visitor to do more exercise and get the correct answer again and again.

Correct answer!

Question 6

An important criterion for evaluating a CALL program, task or activity is the potential for language learning. Does the website fulfill this criterion? If yes, how so? 

This website does have the high potential of language learning, whereby the notes given are not too worldly, which uncluttered the easy way for the visitors to read and comprehend them. Plus, the numerous exercises could strengthen up the visitors’ grasp for each topic. Hence, as one of the visitors, I reckon that this website certainly assists language learning. However, if I were to provide the percentage, I would rate it as 79%. This website could be more enjoyable and pleasurable if more colours are added up to it. Make it gaudier and provide more graphics or pictures in order to make it more astonishing and that can also aid the visitors to understand the rule or explanation better.

Question 7

Would you like to use the application yourself in your future work? Give reasons. 

Yes, I would like to use the application myself in my future work. I can embedded technology into the teaching and learning, by conducting the lesson (perhaps) in the computer lab and ask the students to explore the website themselves, with my by their side, as the facilitator or the guidance. Furthermore, the simplicity of the notes is eye-catchy and this would bridge up the weaker students’ gap as they might be in the lower proficiency level. In addition, it could be used by not only weak students but also all kinds of proficiency. Moreover, the assortment of exercises could also be utilized because the students would not be bored as there are many kinds of exercises such as Multiple Choice Questions, fill in the blanks, construct the sentence and so on.

Apart from directly utilizing the application, in a computer lab, I would like to use the exercises, in which there are printable versions of them provided. Therefore, if the school that I would be in does not have the sufficient facility, or I want to endeavor the lesson in the classroom, the exercises could still be handy. Towards the end, it is the teacher’s creativity and ingenuity and the collaboration with the students that would lead the lesson towards success.