Sharing of English teaching

After some lectures, I learned that online games can be one of the CALLs. Therefore, I wanted to try to integrate playing online games into my teaching. I found a game from this website--http://games.gotmail.jp/bar/. The player needs to find all the items and escape the bar. There is a situation provided in this game and there is a description for each found item. I thought this was a good resource for teaching writing so I decided to use this game.

In the first lesson, I asked my students to play the game. I did request them to speak English throughout the lesson and tell them this was for practising writing. I warned them not to play the game at home but I knew some of them didn't listen to me.

I knew many computers had been broken down so I planned to ask my students to do this activity in pairs. However, I didn't know the game needed flash player to load it and there were only two computers had this software. Therefore, the whole lesson was out of control. My students just played the game excitedly but forgot all about the learning. I was very upset and disappointed. I wanted to give up. However, after I had calmed down, I thought how I could improve and continue this task. In the next lesson, I did the game again with my students but only in my computer and broadcasted it through the projector. I asked them to teach me how to find the items. Through this, they learned the vocabulary. Then, I asked them to write down all the found items on the worksheet.

In the third lesson, I asked them to use the vocabulary and their memories of the game to write a story about the game. Actually, they were not serious but a few of them did create some interesting stories. This is one of the examples.

A man and his girlfriend were in the bar. “If we can meet here after 50 years, I will believe you love me.” she said.


After 50 years, the man went to the bar. Then, he fell asleep in the bar. He wanted to open the door to look for her girlfriend but the door was locked. He could not open it. “I have to look for her…I don't want to regret this night.” Then, je found a box in the bar but it was locked. He did not know the number. He used his girlfriend's birthday number to open the box. There was a key in the box. He used the key to open the door. Then, he saw his girlfriend. “I believe you love me.” Then, they were together.

This was a good experience although it was not very successful. However, my students were very excited when they were playing the game but not very interested in writing the story. Therefore, a lot of things should be improved if I want to do the same activity again, such as the preparation and the design of the post task activity. For the preparation, I need to check every computer in the computer lab. For the post task activity, I can ask my students to do it in groups and share their experience, or criticize the game instead of writing a story because not every game is suitable for writing a story. The most important is attitude. I need to let students know the aim of the task is learning English but not playing games but this is difficult and needs time to change their attitude.

A Reflection on Klaus Schwienhorst's Reading

Schwienhorst (2003) introduced the three perspectives to learner autonomy in this paper. They are the individual-cognitive, the social-interactive, and the experimental-participatory perspective. He examined a practical implementation of learner autonomy principles, tandem learning, followed by a summary of the demands of learner autonomy for CALL. He carried out two experiments, one taken from asynchronous communication, the other from synchronous communication. He explored whether the principles of learner autonomy can be realized with these tools, or whether technologies or pedagogies need to be adapted to support learners in becoming more autonomous. He suggested a three-part structure of pressures, affordances, and potentials of media as a useful model for the evaluation of CMC tools and pedagogies and as a framework in defining the role of the teacher in CMC projects based on learner autonomy. In the discussion, he emphasized that teacher input is particular important in the area of critical reflection and the design of task-based work is important for giving a clear learning focus and defining a clear learning goals for learners.



At the beginning of this paper, Schwienhorst points out that there are misconceptions of learner autonomy. People will easily misinterpret learner autonomy as self-access, self-instruction, or as an equivalent to a 'laissez-faire' approach. This paper reminds me I should never have this concept in mind. I agree with him that teacher's role in autonomous is very important. If you want to apply tandem learning in primary schools, you always need to provide a learning goal and focus for the students. Otherwise, students will just find nothing to say or write and will lose interest quickly.



After reading this paper, I have a rough idea in mind. Teacher creates a discussion forum and the topic is 'My experience and comment of playing (a name of an online game)'. Teacher pairs up the students and asks students to spend 30 minutes on an online game. Then, students need to write a diary about their experience of playing that game and comment on it on the discussion forum. Each pair needs to give feedback to their partner. I think this task has applied the three approaches. The advantages of this task include it fits students' interests, students got things to write and they need to read and think when they give feedback. The disadvantages may include some students do not like playing online game or interested in giving feedback or give feedback without concerning on others feelings. However, I think I'll try to do something like that this semester or next school year. I think it'll be interesting.

Mark My Words

I've just tried Mark My Words. If I need to give comment to every piece of writings, this is a fantastic tool because this tool can help us save a lot of time for thinking of and writing comments. If my assignment is marked in this way, I'll feel so happy and grateful.
However, I'm teaching in a primary school so I would think from the point of view of a primary teacher and primary students. A primary teacher don't mark compositions in this way because we don't teach all the terminologies of English so we won't write so many comments in the compositions. We will underline their mistakes and let them think or write down the correct words and let them do corrections. In addition, I don't think most of the primary students will understand the comments. Therefore, in my point of view, this software is not very useful or helpful for me.
However, I do think this software is great if teachers need to mark writings on the computer. It is very convenient and user friendly.

Reflection on Mark's Article

According to Mark Warschauter, CALL can be categorized in terms of three phases:
Behavioristic CALL---can be referred to as "drill and practice" programs which is based on the model of the computer as tutor, but do not allow enough authentic communication.

Communicative CALL---an extension of the computer as tutor and involves the computer as stimulus and the computer as tool. It focuses on building students' intrinsic motivation and fostering interactivity. It also focuses on stimulating students' discussion, writing and critical thinking, and empowering the learners to use or understanding language.

Integrative Call---based on two important technological developments - multimedia computers and Internet. The advantages of hypermedia are it is more authentic; skills are easily integrated through it; learners have great control oer their learning; it facilitates a principle focus on the content.

I agree with Warschauer's veiwpoint that Internet can be a medium of global communication and a source of limitless authentic materials. In my own teaching practice, Internet is an effective tool for supporting my teaching and students' learning, especially Youtube. Online grammar exercise is also a useful tool for supporting my teaching because I can save time for designing worksheets. Moreover, students like to do online grammar exercise more than worksheets.

Week 4 Reading

Language Learner Behaviour in a Virtual Environment
(Jannie Roed)
Researchers believe that t people behave differently when communicating online compared to a face-to-face situation. It is because when communication online, people show fewer inhibitions, display less social anxiety, and reduce their public self-awareness. They also tend to be more willing to divulge personal information and more honest and forth coming in presenting their personal viewpoints. Based on these findings, it seems that a virtual learning environment may constitute a more relaxed and stress free atmosphere than a classroom. The low level of inhibition and social anxiety, in particular, would be advantageous in foreign language learning, as it would result in increased language production. Roed has carried out a pilot project that explores communicative behaviour patterns among 13 first and second year students of Danish at the University of Edinburgh and University College London. Students solved a language task involving text communications, which were tracked and analysed. The findings are discussed in relation to research on psychological aspects of online behaviour.

I think it is true that people behave differently when communication online compared to a face-to-face situation because I am this type of person. Communicating online gives me enough time to think and construct my meaning and language. Therefore, it reduces the chances of making mistakes. I am afraid of making mistakes so I will be anxious and inhibit myself when confronting a face-to-face communication.

Although there are quiet a lot advantages of communicating online, it may not be workable in Hong Kong’s primary school. There are three concerns for this. Primary students are not mature enough. They are unable to manage their time and control themselves. Communicating online may become an excuse for them to be addicted to other online activities such as playing online games. Another concern is about parents. Parents may not expect their children to have too many online activities. If their children spend too much time with computer, they may become worried and may complaint the school. The last concern is about students again. It is difficult to control students to use English as a medium of communication online.

Sharing of an English lesson

I'm teaching a unit titled 'Changes of Hong Kong'. I could forsee how the students would be bored because they didn't know anything about the old Hong Kong and they assumed that it was unncessary for them to know about the changes of Hong Kong. In order to arouse their interest, therefore, I showed them two videos. One of the videos is about Hong Kong in the past and the other one is about the present Hong Kong. Students were asked to write down the difference between old Hong Kong and the present Hong Kong when they were watching the videos. Then, they needed to report the findings in groups. As a result, students were able to notice the main differences and I believed that they found it more interesting than just read the text and talk about the changes.

A useful website---teaching pronouns

I was designing a worksheet for tomorrow's remedial lesson. The worksheet is about pronouns. I found a useful website which provides about 200 exercises about pronouns.

http://www.wordpower.ws/grammar/gramch18.html