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Improving learners' oral proficiency using online recording tools

This paper looks at the relationship between ESL learners’ oral proficiency and the use of online recording tools and feedback from their instructor over a 14-week period. It also examines how the independent learning and assessment framework can help build learners' autonomy. To some extent, the success of this implementation is dependent on how well learners apply metacognitive strategy because it requires them to build their linguistic competency through their self-assessment and self-evaluation as they identify their own difficulties from their own recordings. Because the audio clips are recorded, they can play them repeatedly to spot their own errors. Social-affective strategy is also used when they share their clips with others for peer reviews. When I was training my secondary four students for oral exams 2 years ago, I instructed them to send me audio clips of their reading (usually of a short prose) and a 10-minute long recount/narration guided by structured questions bas...
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Using exploratory talk to promote children's dialogic identities

What are children's dialogic identities, you wonder? The word, dialogic, comes from the root word, dialogue and the term describes the way children see and position themselves and each other as meaning makers and inquirers of text. Discussion with one or more members in a group is carried out for children to build their dialogic identities. As mentioned in the reading, one significant feature of discussions in classroom contexts is that children can talk freely with one another, build onto one another's responses and ask questions with the teacher taking the role of a facilitator. It sounds very much like a learner-centered and social-affective (or collaborative) strategy that MOE will approve. This approach also encourages children to be active and maybe critical readers with multiple views while teaching them to be more than mere receptors of information passed down by the teacher.   In a bid to address the question that teachers have with regards to using thi...
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Listening Strategies for Literature

"Listening to stories stimulates our senses and challenges our minds." (Brown, 2001) This perfectly sums up the purpose of using listening strategies for Literature. In addition, the writer proposes 4 strategies: read-alouds; listening guides, readers' theatre (I've used this in class before to great fun and hopefully, having the same amount of impact on students) and listening logs. Listening to stories instead of reading them may bring the characters to life which in turn, makes the process more entertaining for students, especially younger children. It is also useful for struggling readers as they can rely on auditory cues, such as voice inflections to figure out what is happening in the stories. They can also learn how certain words are pronounced as they listen and model after the speakers. Moreover, as the writer has brought out, the pervasiveness of mass media has given rise to a generation of learners who rely on multiple senses, so a story is not only enjoye...
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Using literary texts in language teaching...

...is not a new idea. It has been talked about, enacted and evaluated by many. The writer has highlighted a few benefits of this approach and to name a few: literature is a valuable authentic material which offers "authentic" samples of language; it brings us cultural information and fosters personal involvement in readers. Secondly, the writer shared criteria for text selection: appropriateness in terms of lexis, grammar, and style; cultural barrier between readers and text should be mediated by the teacher and the text should be pleasurable for students. Among the pedagogical approaches discussed, I like the storylines activity most because it allows students to use their imagination to arrange the sentences in a sequential manner. This encourages them to rely on their knowledge of the language (e.g. discourse markers) to make sense of the sentences. Lastly, I would also like to end this post with the quote by Baurain that rounded up the article, "Knowing what your st...
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Small group multitasking in literature classes

What are the things that a teacher associates with the word 'multitask'? A busy individual typing a disciplinary report while chowing down a sandwich at lunchtime or teaching the concepts of grammar while addressing a defiant behavior in class. Whatever the scenario, it appears that the teacher is the one multi-tasking and not the students. However, in this article written by Baurain, a flexible small group framework called multitasking was devised to help students collaborate and learn literary skills in an American literature class. Granted, the students are adult learners and it worked because they are highly motivated and focused and it made the lessons more engaging and interesting when they played multiple roles during the interaction and sharing of ideas. Eventually, the small group developed into a learning community and students gained heightened reading and interpretive abilities. I think what surprised me in this article is not so much the improvement that students...
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4 good reasons 4

I've just read the reading 'Four good reasons to use literature in primary school ELT' (Ghosn, 2002). The author proposes the use of authentic children's literature in classrooms that teach English as a foreign language, in replacement of the carefully structured curriculum materials. Children will be more motivated to learn English as a language from reading story books because they are more interesting, especially when they come with colourful illustrations. This will in turn help children learn the natural language used in narration and acquire academic literacy skills such as critical thinking skills. Finally, the moral values embedded in most children's literature may develop empathy and tolerance in the learners. Undoubtedly, introducing literature in a language classroom reaps plenty of benefits. However, choosing the right or 'quality literature' (Ghosn, 2002, p.177) takes more than just justifying the reasons to use literature. A culturally-inappro...
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