Week 5: Internet in ESL for a better speaking and listening skills

This article is focused on speaking and listening skills online, and how the internet offers a better developing of those skills for students of a second language. In the beginning, this article surprised me because it says that while traditional teaching method on classrooms is focused on writing and reading, the opportunities to develop speaking and listening have increased thanks to internet.

 I want to remember how CALL has grown up in a few years, and the benefits that has brought for students of ESL. George M. Chinnery quote “According a report issued by the United Nation’s Conference on Trade and Development, the number of people worldwide with access to the Internet grew 20 percent between 2001 and 2002; during this period the number of users in developed countries increased by a modest 12 percent, while the number of users in developing countries grew a more impressive 40 percent”. This means that users of the internet have grown up a lot every year, and with that also the sources and websites for students of ESL have grown too.

Something that teachers should know is the importance of the internet to develop speaking and listening skills, they should start to apply live chats, voice chats and create chat rooms or use the chat rooms that are mention in the article like Dave’s ESL Cafe Chat Central, English Club ESL Chat, ALOUD etc.

Something that I learned and I want to share with a colleague is the importance that speaking and listening skills must take on classrooms, and that teachers and future teachers should start using activities from internet in classrooms to create a better developing of speaking and listening skills on students and not just be focused on writing and reading skills. . score: 4

Week 4: Internet to improve ELT in the world

I liked a lot of this article named "CALL Me … Maybe:  A Framework for Integrating  the Internet into ELT". When I started to read what is about I realized that is an interesting and important topic principally for teachers and future teachers. The integration of internet into ELT and all the new frameworks activities that we can find on the internet; this is the principle that I would like to remember from this article because now thanks to CALL we can have a better and faster learning English process, as well as, it has become in an important support for teachers to develop more competitive classes.

 I have always believed that the internet is an important tool for teachers to find activities ideas and frameworks as well as to have a better communication teachers-students through websites like Skype and ALICE. Every teacher should know the importance of internet in the learning process and how useful can be for teachers the variety of activities that can find on internet, and the different websites such as VOA, WebCorpLive, etc, to facilitate the learning process for students. Also, I would like to share this importance of internet with a colleague too because internet it is a part of our life now, so I think it is important to take advantage of this and start to use it in the teaching area.

A question that I still have is what can we do to more students can get internet access? Because internet as a tool for learning English is amazing; nonetheless, I have seen a big inconvenience in this, and it is that not all people have an internet connection and the most of them always are people with a bad economy. This can be a big inconvenience for teachers and students because it would be depriving them of a better education.- Score: 4.

Week 3: Podcasts and a new sunrise

I liked a lot the readings of this week about podcasts. I had a interesting reaction about the integration of technologies into language classrooms, but principally with the integration of podcast because I have noticed that podcasts can be a useful tool in teaching and principally in ESL. In addition, on the article called “Integrating CALL into the classroom: the role of podcasting in an ESL listening strategies course“ we can read that at the beginning podcasts were used just for do reviews of classes, but this has evolved and now are used to teach foreign languages. We can find some advantages like the fast use of podcast through mp3 or CD player, a better integration and relationship of syllabus with podcast and selft-study. Despite that, in the article “Blending technologies in ESL courses: A reflexive enquiry” is described how for some students the podcasts are not important or they do not like or care so much. As well as we have to add that there are some hindrances that podcast has yet, such as insufficient time, lack of institution development, not owning or little access to players etc.

 I always have believed that podcast can be useful to develop listening and speaking skills and I have believed that this can be bored or few attractive for some students as we could read in the article. For that, I think is necessary be updating this tool and made podcast more attractive for as many as possible students. Something that I wanted to share with a colleague are the podcasts. I think podcasts are important tools to help students to learn a language faster. Although podcast have some disadvantages, I think they have more advantages that can be useful for some colleagues on classes and I hope take advantage of them on my future classes too. -Score: 4.

Week 2: ICT tools for a new students' generation

My initial impression of this article was a short disbelief about the impact of ICT, the autonomy learning and self-awareness that students could get, but when I followed reading I could see that it was not difficult to the most of them to get it. Something I want to remember from this article is the importance that CALL took in this program, and how CALL influenced to the students to get learning autonomy and self-awareness because it demanded them more responsibility. A belief of mine that was confirmed is that CALL can help to get autonomy learning and improve students’ skills. Although I was not sure at all about this, now that I have read the article I am sure about those CALL benefits. Something I learned from this article and that every teacher should know was how helpful is motive and make the students to be more independents and self-confidents through use of CALL to get a better learning process, and the teachers must to show how managing their time and start to promote the activities that students consider useful such as vocabulary games, parts of speech, suffix etc. Something I learned and that I immediately wanted to share with a colleague was the autonomous learning, self-Awareness and the impact of technological tools because those are interested points that play an important role in the learning process of the students as we could read in the article. A questions I still have is how much is the cost or the capacitation to create a program like this? because moving this program at our country context, El Salvador, programs like this for foreign languages students as well as for primary and secondary students it would be really helpful to have a better education system. Therefore, these types of programs are so difficult to promote and create because of the poor amount of funds for education that our country has, but I hope that could change someday. -Rate: 4.