Posts

Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing

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This entry is about explaining the ideas of telecollaboration and how it can be beneficial for developing intercultural on writing and speaking tasks. What is telecollaboration? It is connecting learners from different part of the world through different types of technological devices such as emails, social networks, instant messaging apps, blogs, wikis or online learning environments that allow them to share their culture and approach a different culture than theirs. There are three different types according to the implementation that the teacher and the learners what to develop within their classes. Tandem language learning (e-tandem as its online equivalent) ·          It involves a language exchange and collaboration between two partners of different mother tongue ·          Learners must make use of both languages during an hour or so ·          learners speak in their mother tongue for thirty minutes and switch to practice their target language ·

11th confession: changing my classroom with Edmodo

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     This semester is almost over and most students are studying for the finals. During the last ten lessons the learners applied digital technologies, such as voice recording, PowerPoint Presentations (PPP), making videos and Edmodo (Virtual Learning Environment), in order to promote learning responsibility and independence. Additionally these activities were planned to encourage students to speak, to listen to themselves, to experiment, and to ask questions. a profile in Edmodo        Some research has shown that social software tools can be effectively integrated into both face-to-face and online environments (McLoughlin, C and Lee, M. 2008). By implementing a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) the students received a collection of integrated devices which helped them enhance their oral skills and provided a system to deliver information, access to resources, track students’ performance, and assess.      As a matter of fact Edmodo is considered to be a wonderful and

10th confession: Have you listened to yourself speaking another language?

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In my previous post I talked about PowerPoint Presentations that students are implementing inside their oral English classes. However, students also implement Audio Voice Recording. Most students are already familiar with audio recording in some form: voice messaging, playing online in Virtual Worlds and even Now recording apps make it easier than ever to use audio recording as a classroom tool (King, M. 2016). Besides, hearing one’s own voice on audiotape can be an eye-opening experience. Having the opportunity to record can be a powerful method for promoting independent judgement and goal setting, along the ownership of the learning process (Hudson, R. 2005). In my introductory class, students experimented with an IPA website in order to be able to read pronunciation. By doing so, pupils were encouraged to study more efficiently by promoting the use of digital technologies and carrying out more dynamics activities implementing Audio Voice Recording (AVR) and an IPA

9th confession: it is not easy to talk to people

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     This week was the eighth one in my oral English classes. The semester is almost over and it is time to draw some conclusions about the methodology that was implemented during these lessons.       In previous posts I said that four pieces of technology were going to be implemented in order to enhance students’ speaking skills in each class, to know: voice recording, Edmodo (Virtual Learning Environment), making videos and PowerPoint Presentations (PPP).      Even though each class is unique and has its own challenges; this post attempts to share an experience about Chinese university students using PowerPoint Presentation (PPP) in public speaking to enhance their public speaking and oral English skills. At the same time, this entry will provide information about the benefits and possible pitfalls of PPP implementation in an oral English class. Student doing a public speaking presentation with PowerPoint.      Speaking activities inside a classroom are the