If you sit at home one afternoon watching daytime television, no less than five schools will advertise their excellent online educational opportunities. While in the past distance learning was restricted to trade schools and nationally accredited schools, today top schools offer online courses and full online degrees. In fact, I am currently enrolled in a fully online masters degree program through Indiana University-Bloomington, a very well respected school. Students in grades K-12 can also take part or all of their coursework online through state-funded virtual schools. Online education is no longer an anomaly, it is becoming the norm. And if a student chooses not to take an online course, often that student will find that one or more of his/her classes meet in a comptuer lab and use technology to support the course objectives.
ESL education often follows the trends in mainstream education. Sometimes this change occurs slowly and sometimes very quickly. Currently, English Language Learners (ELLs) are not given the opportunity to complete an entire ESL program online, although I don't think we are far from this happening. However, most ESL programs today intergrate technology into the coursework somehow. For example, last spring I visited the ESL prorgram at a middle school in order to observe a few classes. During their two hours in their pull-out ESL class, the students I observed spent 45 minutes in a computer lab working on an individualized program that rates the student's ability, chooses activities based on the student's current level, and tracks the student's progress. The program allowed students to work on all skill areas, except speaking. Another example comes from my current work situation. I direct a language program for university-bound adults. As part of the curriculum, the students spend an hour a day in a computer lab where they use a variety of programs to support their Individualized Learning Plan.
In both of the scenarios above, the instructor's job is to teach the students how to use the technology and then support the students as they move through their individualized lessons. Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) does not only work with individualized learning plans, but also with regular coursework in an ESL program. Often times, as Hubbard (2007) points out, ESL instructors are trained to use technology efficiently to support language learning. Just think, many ESL teachers (of adults) take a 4 week intensive course on how to teach ESL and then they begin teaching right away. I don't know of any of these programs that provides instruction on CALL. Hubbard (2007) also points out that most graduate programs in language learning do not provide coursework in CALL and the ones that do offer the course as an elective.
Due to the lack of professional development in CALL, Hubbard (2007) calls upon organizations like TESOL to place more emphasis on the importance of incorporating technology into the language learning classroom. He presents a list of tips on how to begin an individualized plan of professional development in the field of CALL. A few of these tips are:
- Start small
- Identify one area of technology to use in the classroom and try it out and perfect the use of it
- When learning a new technology, learn by show and tell, don't let others do it for you (Hubbard, 2007).
In my workplace, I need to provide more support to my teachers on the technology available in the computer lab. We are a new school and no one is really familiar with the technology yet. I am somewhat familiar, but I definitely need to spend more time in the lab familiarizing myself with the software.
I think there is often a fear of technology when it comes to teaching. Just as when manufacturing became automized, many fear that they might lose their jobs to teachnology. In education, technology does not replace the teacher - technology simply changes the teacher's role. For seasoned teachers who have found a method of teaching that they are comfortable with and that they believe works, encouraging them to change their role can be very difficult. However, computer assisted learning is not a fad, it is here to stay and we all need to adjust. I know I am adjusting and I'm very exciting about the possibilities CALL brings!!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Website Evaluation of "365 ESL Short Stories: A Free Site for ESL Intermediate Learners"
Yesterday one of my teachers asked me to assist her in finding ESL versions of short stories to use in her beginning to intermediate reading class. The class is an elective type course with course objectives, but no textbook. It is up to the instructor to locate resources to use in the classroom. When searching the web with her, I came across a website titled “365 ESL Short Stories: A Free Site for ESL Intermediate Learners.” While the website seems very primitive in nature and is riddled with advertisements, I think that it provides very useful instruction for the English language learner.
“365 ESL Short Stories” is found at URL http://www.eslfast.com/ as well as URL http://www.eslyes.com/ and is linked from the main website found at URL http://www.rong-chang.com/. The author of the sites, Dr. Rong Chang Li, appears to be quite credible. At the top of the main site Dr. Li links a shortened version of his Curriculum Vitae which includes the following information: a color picture of himself, his email address, selected publications, presentations, software, internet projects, and awards. Included in his awards are grants from organizations such as University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, TESOL, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Hewlett Foundation gives money worldwide to better the social and environmental problems of the world. This is a very large foundation that issues grants on a competitive basis. One can see from his credentials, that Dr. Li, who works in China, is a very credible author. I also googled his name and found that he and his websites are referenced on a number of other credible ESL websites.
If he is so credible, then why do I describe his website as “primitive”? Well, the sites are no frills and look as if they were made in one day. The main page is simply a list of 365 stories. The background is white, the numbers are black, and the links to the short stories are traditional blue links. There are no graphics, no welcomes, and no explanations. If Dr. Li had not linked his Vitae to the website, the viewer would not be able to discern whether or not the site was credible just by looking at it.
When the viewer clicks on one of the short stories links, it takes the viewer to another page that has the title of the story on the top of the page with three icons. These icons are very useful. One is the picture of a book that stays “Dictionary.” Clicking on this icon will open a new window that takes you to http://www.dictionary.com/. The other two icons allow the view to listen to the story. One icon says “real” and the other says “slow.” The viewer can listen to the story as one might normally hear it or the viewer can listen to the story in slower, more articulated speech. The “real” version can also be heard by clicking the play button on the music player just below the title. The “real” version for every story is in a woman’s voice and the “slow” version is in a man’s voice. Below the music player is a bar of google advertisements as well as a google search bar. Along the left hand side of the page, taking up about one third of the page, are more advertisements. The story is located below and to the right of the advertisements in large black letters on top of a white background. At the bottom of the page are blue links taking the reader to activities associated with the reading.
Even though the page with the story is not well laid out, the reading and the activities are very interesting. The readings range from three to five short paragraphs on a variety of topics, including TV shows, news stories, and personal stories. The activities include a list of vocabulary linked to www.dictionary.com, cloze exercises where the student gets immediate feedback and percentage correct, a crossword puzzle that can be filled in online and checked, and a dictation exercise where the student listens to a sentence, types it in the box, and checks it for accuracy. Every story has the four activities above and some stories have additional activities. The activities do not ask students to work on reading comprehension, but rather vocabulary building, listening for dictation, spelling, and grammar/mechanics. I would like to see a reading comprehension activity added to the available skill that the student can learn.
Also linked to the main page of “365 Short Stories” are a list of vocabulary, sentence structure writing practice, 2,000+ ESL/EFL conversations on different topics, and links to beginning reading selections with activities similar to the intermediate reading selections on the “365 Short Stories” site. The amount of material available to the English language learner on this website is vast, the author is extremely credible, but the website itself lacks in its overall appeal. I would like something that is much more organized and more aesthetically pleasing.
“365 ESL Short Stories” is found at URL http://www.eslfast.com/ as well as URL http://www.eslyes.com/ and is linked from the main website found at URL http://www.rong-chang.com/. The author of the sites, Dr. Rong Chang Li, appears to be quite credible. At the top of the main site Dr. Li links a shortened version of his Curriculum Vitae which includes the following information: a color picture of himself, his email address, selected publications, presentations, software, internet projects, and awards. Included in his awards are grants from organizations such as University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign, TESOL, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The Hewlett Foundation gives money worldwide to better the social and environmental problems of the world. This is a very large foundation that issues grants on a competitive basis. One can see from his credentials, that Dr. Li, who works in China, is a very credible author. I also googled his name and found that he and his websites are referenced on a number of other credible ESL websites.
If he is so credible, then why do I describe his website as “primitive”? Well, the sites are no frills and look as if they were made in one day. The main page is simply a list of 365 stories. The background is white, the numbers are black, and the links to the short stories are traditional blue links. There are no graphics, no welcomes, and no explanations. If Dr. Li had not linked his Vitae to the website, the viewer would not be able to discern whether or not the site was credible just by looking at it.
When the viewer clicks on one of the short stories links, it takes the viewer to another page that has the title of the story on the top of the page with three icons. These icons are very useful. One is the picture of a book that stays “Dictionary.” Clicking on this icon will open a new window that takes you to http://www.dictionary.com/. The other two icons allow the view to listen to the story. One icon says “real” and the other says “slow.” The viewer can listen to the story as one might normally hear it or the viewer can listen to the story in slower, more articulated speech. The “real” version can also be heard by clicking the play button on the music player just below the title. The “real” version for every story is in a woman’s voice and the “slow” version is in a man’s voice. Below the music player is a bar of google advertisements as well as a google search bar. Along the left hand side of the page, taking up about one third of the page, are more advertisements. The story is located below and to the right of the advertisements in large black letters on top of a white background. At the bottom of the page are blue links taking the reader to activities associated with the reading.
Even though the page with the story is not well laid out, the reading and the activities are very interesting. The readings range from three to five short paragraphs on a variety of topics, including TV shows, news stories, and personal stories. The activities include a list of vocabulary linked to www.dictionary.com, cloze exercises where the student gets immediate feedback and percentage correct, a crossword puzzle that can be filled in online and checked, and a dictation exercise where the student listens to a sentence, types it in the box, and checks it for accuracy. Every story has the four activities above and some stories have additional activities. The activities do not ask students to work on reading comprehension, but rather vocabulary building, listening for dictation, spelling, and grammar/mechanics. I would like to see a reading comprehension activity added to the available skill that the student can learn.
Also linked to the main page of “365 Short Stories” are a list of vocabulary, sentence structure writing practice, 2,000+ ESL/EFL conversations on different topics, and links to beginning reading selections with activities similar to the intermediate reading selections on the “365 Short Stories” site. The amount of material available to the English language learner on this website is vast, the author is extremely credible, but the website itself lacks in its overall appeal. I would like something that is much more organized and more aesthetically pleasing.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
The Authenticness of our Endeavors to be Authentic
Ok. So my title is a bit wordy, but this really is what Guariento and Morely (2001) discuss in their article "Test and task authenticity in the EFL classroom" and it is something I argue with ELL/ESL/EFL teachers all the time. First of all, the question arises, what makes a text or task truly authentic. Well Guariento and Morely (2001) start their article with a queste from Little et. al. (1998) that states that an authentic text is one "created to fultil some social purpose in the language community in which it was produced" (347). Well, ok, this is the definition of "discourse" really, but is it the definition of an authentic text?
My argument would be that we cannot fully create an authentic environment in the classroom. We can mimic authentic environments, but we cannot actually create a post office, restaurant, rental office, etc in our classrooms. No matter how well the activity is structured, some portion of the activity is controlled and guided practice.
Part of the problem, as Guariento and Morely (2001) point out in attempting to create an authentic learning task is the issue of task difficulty. This is very problemmatic with beginning language learners. Let's take the task of ordering in a restaurant. The instructor can teach the beginning students 20 new words associated with ordering in a restaurant. The teacher can teach the basic script of how to take an order (server role) and how to give an order (customer role). But the script will be limited due to the student's current vocabulary and current ability to understand and use questions and verb forms. The teacher can set up a mock restaurant in the classroom and assign students the roles of servers and customers. The students can role play taking and giving orders. There can be menus and table settings and even food and drink. But no matter what, the students are still performing a task in a controlled environment, not a truly authentic environment. If the teacher took the students to a restaurant, they may find themselves in a situation that is not like what they learned in the classroom and they may not be prepared to function in that environment.
The thing is this: The controlled, guided practice that occurs in the classroom is OK - in fact, it's GREAT! It is exactly what some students need because they are beginners. This is something that I have thought all along and the coolest part is that Guariento and Markley (2001) agree! In their conclusion they state, "In this paper we have argued that the authenticity if texts (genuineness) may need to be sacrificed if we are to achieve authentic responses in our students" (352). That is, the task may not seem very authentic, but the language the students' produce is - because the language is new for them and they really are speaking and learning.
This article really made me happy. There's so much more to the article and so much more can be said, but for now I'll let you chew on what I wrote.
My argument would be that we cannot fully create an authentic environment in the classroom. We can mimic authentic environments, but we cannot actually create a post office, restaurant, rental office, etc in our classrooms. No matter how well the activity is structured, some portion of the activity is controlled and guided practice.
Part of the problem, as Guariento and Morely (2001) point out in attempting to create an authentic learning task is the issue of task difficulty. This is very problemmatic with beginning language learners. Let's take the task of ordering in a restaurant. The instructor can teach the beginning students 20 new words associated with ordering in a restaurant. The teacher can teach the basic script of how to take an order (server role) and how to give an order (customer role). But the script will be limited due to the student's current vocabulary and current ability to understand and use questions and verb forms. The teacher can set up a mock restaurant in the classroom and assign students the roles of servers and customers. The students can role play taking and giving orders. There can be menus and table settings and even food and drink. But no matter what, the students are still performing a task in a controlled environment, not a truly authentic environment. If the teacher took the students to a restaurant, they may find themselves in a situation that is not like what they learned in the classroom and they may not be prepared to function in that environment.
The thing is this: The controlled, guided practice that occurs in the classroom is OK - in fact, it's GREAT! It is exactly what some students need because they are beginners. This is something that I have thought all along and the coolest part is that Guariento and Markley (2001) agree! In their conclusion they state, "In this paper we have argued that the authenticity if texts (genuineness) may need to be sacrificed if we are to achieve authentic responses in our students" (352). That is, the task may not seem very authentic, but the language the students' produce is - because the language is new for them and they really are speaking and learning.
This article really made me happy. There's so much more to the article and so much more can be said, but for now I'll let you chew on what I wrote.
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