Computer Assisted Language Learning Blog

Self Directed Professional Development Professional Development does not always mean attending standardized and official TPD hosted by the government, or teacher training institutions etc. It does not also mean a site-based one that includes many teachers and scheduled rigorously to meet the expectation of the teachers on site.Yet, it can mean just a self-directed teacher professional development (TPD)(Gaible & Burns, 2005), initiated and conducted by the teacher themselves. The last type of TPD is probably the most feasible one for us. since it requires only our will and intention to be a better teacher. Through the use of technology self-directed TPD nowadays is just a click away. Hereby My example of work done

Today technology has become a major driving force in our life. We rely most of our life's business on the use of technology. Ranging from making phone calls, traveling distance places, making daily food, and handling various works. We use technology at home, in the office, at schools, and everywhere. In terms of schools, Technology today has contributed so much to the leap that makes education today develop faster and faster. But unfortunately technology may never be able to replace human teachers to educate (Wright, 2013). It is the only tool that may help teachers to ease them in educating people. In this session we will look at some tools that are available on the Internet that can help us store students learning progress information, communicate with students and parents, distribute quizzes, making wikis, sharing files, building class web, scheduling etc. Why classroom management is Important Managing Online Learner  A. Gradebook Engrade ( http://www.engra...

Having read the example of lesson plans above,  Now  consider yourself as a teacher who will use technology in your language class. Therefore, you will need to make a lesson plan. The following links provide information about Lesson Plannings. Read carefully to find out what should you be aware of when designing a lesson plan, for example Hereby my example of work done : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SyKdbmjqFFROucrwM9hw6ppmyBXUhLSw/view?usp=sharing

Teaching Listening Comprehension.  In teaching listening comprehension the focus of the teachers is to help students with techniques on how to listen. So tips on how to listen is very crucial to teach on the students. Below is a link that will take us to a website that gives us practical tips on how to teach listening skills: HOW TO TEACH LISTENING SKILLS  If we focus on the product of listening only then the tendency is that we do not teach listening rather we test listening. Then what are the strategies?  The following articles discuss theories about the development of listening skills, tips on how to deliver a listening activities and some practical tips on listening activities that can be performed by teachers and students while learning a language. Listening for young learners Teaching listening to college students The links  below inspire us with activities/Lesson plan that can be adapted to t...

A. Teaching Speaking The goal of language is communication. So whatever language we learn, wherever we learn, and we never we learn, the goal of language learning is always aimed at using it for communication. Although we may use it only for the receptive purposes such as listening and reading but it is also part of communication. For the productive skills like speaking and writing, the communication function is even more crucial. In this section we will look at why speaking skills is important, how to teach the skills? What teacher should know in order to better the speaking activities in a language class. Let's start by looking at the following sites which presents some useful tips on how to choose activities in a speaking class, and some consideration that teachers should know when planning a language instruction focusing on the teaching of speaking: 1. Oral Production in th second language classroom Teaching speaking skills in a cla...

Teaching Writing Writing is one of the skills that language learners need to learn besides the other three skills. But the question for teachers that often comes up is how to teach writing skills effectively? In order to know the answers to the above questions the following article gives us a walk-through of what is the process of writing development, what people usually write for, what might be the good strategies for teaching writing, is there a relationship between writing skills and other language skills? etc Beliefs about teaching writing How to effectively teach English writing skills Talking about teaching strategies, the following web-based seminar (WEBINAR) hosted by British council, is a good source for learning teaching writing strategies that can enrich our knowledge on teaching strategies. hereby my example of work done : https://youtu.be/h5zg-voKuNE

In this session we will be looking at how technology may help in teaching reading. But before that, we will firstly look at how people approach the teaching of reading, in this case is the teaching of EFL (English as Foreign Language) reading. Check the following link: Reading approaches for an EFL class Now, lets' see the following websites which shows how EFL reading experience can be enriched by using technology: Technology helps teaching reading Having read about some tools and technology assisted reading resources in the website above. It is time for us now to get the feel of how actually technology may help with reading by checking the following websites: An example of the text to speech tools - here (Natural Reader) An example of word games - here WORD GAMES An example of Interactive reading by British Council A sample of A Phonic reading can be found here So, can you feel tell the difference between paper-based reading activities and intera...

The website that you have visited above is CALLED Webquest. It is a specially designed web which is intended for learning activity which is build around  the web search activity. There is a generic structure for a webquest site, as you may have been aware of by know. The generic structure of the web is as follow: Introduction Task Process Evaluation Conclusion. To know more about what webquest is check the following video: What is a webquest To make a webquest, there are few alternative websites that can be used. One of them is http://www.zunal.com . To give you an idea of how webquest is designed and made check the following video as well my example of my work done : http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=459027

Online Resources for EFL teachers Internet has been very valuable resources for language teaching. However we need to have set goals and know specific techniques for researching the internet resources, organizing the information about them, sharing and using them in the classroom. This session will equip you with such knowledge and skills. In this session 5 we will learn how to search for information across the Internet. Lin (2013) says that today it has been a necessary basic quality  and ability for people to search for information using internet technology. More and more people rely their daily information search heavily on search engines like google, yahoo, or bing. However, since very often the results of the searching in a search engine are so vast and not focused then search engines may also confuse them. Thus, ingenuity and skills on how to use search engine is necessary. The following websites provide information on how to use search engine for search...

1. Search Engines: In order to do internet research we need reliable tools to search for abundant information on the Internet. The tool to do so is normally known as 'search engines'. The 'Search Engine' is a web-based software that is designed to search for information on the Internet. People today rely heavily on search engines to find information they want. This is because by using search engines people can find almost any kind of information, food, drink, direction, job vacancies, sales etc. The most popular search engine today is google (eBizMBA, 2014), probably not a single internet user not knowing what google is. But is it only google that we can rely on to find information on the Internet? Of course not. The following is a website that list many other websites that can be useful for internet research: 2. Lets Research The HISTORY of CALL Having learned how to search effectively on the internet using search engines. It is time for you now to research abou...