Pronunciation:
To speak
English properly one has to focus on developing both the Oral and Aural
faculties. Speaking skills can be built by practicing proper pronunciation and
intonation, which is dependent on listening skills. Hence, improving both the
Oral/Aural faculties is necessary to acquire expertise in English. This week we
learned techniques to improve the listening and speaking skills of our
students.
We went
through articles discussing the importance of pronunciation and learned how to
improve it using different tools. All the participants working together led to
a fantastic discussion where many ideas were pooled in. This helped immensely. “Using
original videos and sound effects to teach English” by Shahla Yassaei (http://americanenglish.state.gov/search/solr/speaking) led me towards so many new tools
that can be used in my classroom.
Looking at some great lesson plans I got ideas regarding their implementation (with
minor modifications, suited to my students’ needs) in class. Two great ideas
that I would like to introduce are: using personal photographs (http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Ahola-PersonalPhotographs.html) to narrate stories and scavenger
hunts (http://www.onestopenglish.com/skills/speaking/teaching-ideas/)
to improve vocabulary.
A plethora of exciting websites exists where one can find so many tools and resources. Audio and video clippings that can assist learning English can be found in abundance. I liked Randall’s ESL Cyber Listening Lab (www.esl-lab.com/vocab/v-computers.htm
), Spoken Skills (http://www.spokenskills.com/student-activities.cfm?section=studentpractice&practicepageID=1501
), Learning English (http://learningenglish.voanews.com/),
Agenda Web (http://www.englishgrammarsecrets.com/passive/exercise3.swf), Englishtown (http://corporate.englishtown.com/online/home.aspx),
Ship or Sheep (http://www.shiporsheep.com/) and Vocaroo (http://vocaroo.com/). There is still a lot to explore.
All these sites and the ones mentioned by other participants would help us in
building the Oral and Aural Skills of our students.
Reviewing a Project Report:
Eight sample
Project reports belonging to past participants of the Webskills course were
given, from which we were asked to read any one. A review of the Project that
we read was to be presented. I studied two of them: Joanna Zubel’s (Poland) and
Prem Bahadur Phyak’s (Nepal) report. I decided on reviewing Joanna’s report. It
was a fascinating experience as I could understand that this course would
finally lead me to writing such a report. I liked her style and her in depth
analysis of the students’ needs as well as the problems she was facing. How she
introduced technology in her class and what the students’ responses to the new
improvement were, helped me to think about my class setting and what would be
beneficial for my students. Gordana presented a fantastic review of Phyak’s
report. Ravaka, Sergio and Janja reviewed Zlatka’s report and presented many
angles of the same report. This was so helpful!
In all,
this week was great!
I have
added a page to my blog titled, “India: My Homeland”. I invite all of you to
visit my new page and leave your comments….
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