TPR

TPR should create an easy learning environment and the target of the teaching is the beginning learner. The goal of the TPR teaching method is to let the learners learning L2 in the way they learned their native language, just like an infant acquires its native language.

Q1: What are the goals of teachers who use TPR?

TPR was developed in order to reduce the stress people feel when studying foreign languages and thereby encourage students to persist in their study beyond a beginning level of proficiency.

Q2: What is the role of the teacher？ What is the role of the students?

The teacher is the director of all students’ behavior and the students are imitators of her nonverbal model.

Q3: What are some characteristics of the teaching/ learning process?

The first phase of the lesson is the teacher making modeling, and the second part of the lesson is that these same students demonstrate that they can understand the commands by performing them alone and teacher could repeat his or her oral command for several times and let the students be familiar with the vocabularies and then naturally speak them out.

Q4: What is the nature of student-teacher interaction? What is the nature of student-student interaction?

First the teacher interacts with the whole group verbally and with individual students, and the students respond nonverbally. Later on the students become more verbal and the teacher responds nonverbally.

Q5: How are the feeling of the students dealt with?

One of the primary ways this is accomplished is to allow learners to speak when they are ready and teachers should avoid pushing the students to speak and make the language learning as enjoyable as possible.

Q6: How is language viewed? How is culture viewed?

Just like the way the acquisition of the native language, the oral modality is primary. Culture is the lifestyle of people who speak the language natively.

Q7: What areas of language are emphasized? What language skills are emphasized?

Vocabulary and grammatical structures are emphasized over other language areas and they should be embedded within imperatives.

Q8: What is the role of the students’ native language?

TPR is usually introduced in the student’s native language.

Q9: How is evaluation accomplished?

Teacher could accomplish their evaluation to the students immediately through watching how the students react to the commands and could clearly see if the students had master the vocabularies and sentences.

Q10: How does the teacher respond to student errors?

It is normal that students made errors when they first begin speaking. Teachers should be tolerant of them and only correct major errors.

Voice Thread

The Voice Thread provides a forum for teachers and students to communicate and interact with each other  in a dynamic and interesting method. The teacher can provide students with various topics along with interesting pictures, and students could comment and learn from this topic and picture. Also the teacher could record his or her teaching directions orally and it provides students with an opportunity to learn both visually and aurally.

I commented on Wenjing's Voice Thread and Ye's Voice Thread. By commenting on Wenjing's Voice Thread, I commented my point of view to teach with or by music and I like her Voice Thread because she  utilizes the Voice Thread as a discussion forum. Ye's Voice Thread is very interesting and inspiring. She raises a discussion about different teaching styles in 21st century.

My Voice Thread is to provide the learners with two interesting cartoon pictures and I would like my students to choose one of the picture to comment by using as many as possible adjectives. I intend to practice Students' adjectives using by using the Voice Thread.

ePals: collaborate globally

I think ePals help teachers to create authentic opportunities for our students to talk, share, learn and collaborate with their classmates and other students around the world. And also I think ePals could help our students to get a glance at other countries’ culture and give them a chance to practice their English skills in authentic, natural and spontaneous ways.

EPals is like a window that could lead students to the more authentic language context and actually “touch” the language or really know someone who is at the other corner of the world using the language everyday!

On the ePals webpage you can have a lot of opportunities like search by projects and then find some interesting topic you would like to engage to. Or you can collaborate with a classroom by searching by country or searching by project. If you are a teacher, you can find a lot of useful resources such as you can see various teachers’ work in various topics. One can even search by families and get to know what other culture’s families look like.

All in all, ePals is a wonderful forum that can allow teachers and students all over the world to collaborate together.

photo by: mtsofan

Photo stories and comic strips

Photo stories : A street cat.




Comic strips:

I would incorporate the Animoto into my future teaching more often. Because it can grab students attention and make the lesson more interesting!

Comic strips is also interesting but it is not very practical in teaching.

Digital storytelling

  Digital storytelling is the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component. Just like the Bookr we have made, the Bookr is a kind of digital storytelling that could allow the students to see it online with picture explanation and text. I think because storytelling involves a lot plots and by digital storytelling the teacher could give the students a deep understanding of what the teacher is talking about and provide them with visual aid at the same time. Nowadays, many schools expose the instructors and students to storytelling and this method really facilitate various learning styles.


  In the future, I would incorporate storytelling into my teaching but not too much, I mean I will not give the students everyday or every week homework in digital storytelling method. But I will use digital storytelling occasionally, in order to give my students a new taste of the learning method and make them get interested in my teaching material! Also I will hold a group work by letting the students make an overall digital storytelling book. Just like the 7 things you should know about digital storytelling "Digital stories let students express themselves not only with their own words but also in their own voices, fostering a sense of individuality and of owing their creations".

typicaltourist

Description of class situation:

  The teacher used the target language in the classroom appropriately and effectively. Because these students are primary English learners, so the teacher did not exert some complicated or hard to understand words, instead her use of English was appropriate to students needs. Especially her illustration words, like demonstrate a grammar, are easy and suitable for the elementary learners.

  Because these are adult learners, the teacher encouraged her students to use their own life experience in the learning process. For example, she asked the students to put plus sign or minus sign to the activities he or her used to do. The teacher modified her teaching methods to suit her students. She diminished the fear of failure by offering activities that are achievable and by paying special attention to the level of challenge presented by exercises. Such as she put forward the easy question to the students to encourage them to take part into the on-class activity and she encouraged them to talk with each other.

  Also I think the activities chosen to achieve the objectives were effective. The time allotted for activities was appropriate. The amount of teacher talk and students talk was appropriate.

  Grammar is a little abstract to primary learners, but the teacher vividly put the easy but inspiring activity into her teaching process and made everyone participating in it and thinking actively. The teacher divided her attention among students appropriately. Also the teacher was well prepared and she made a good interaction with students. Also she is flexible, for example, when talked about that everyone eats ice creams in the winter she quickly change her question to another items. She integrated cultural instruction into class activities. For example, after talking about the snowman she told students something(which I cannot hear clearly)

  But I think she could better improve her teaching method. For example, a little use of audio-visual technical materials would be better for learners’ understanding.

Classroom atmosphere

  Students’ participation was active and lively. The class atmosphere was warm, open and accepting. The teacher was sensitive to students’ difficulties and abilities.

Q2: The learning aims did not made clear to the students at the beginning of the class.

Q3: The aim of instructing students to understand the grammar is the preponderance aim. There are many aims during the teaching process, including aim of let all the class students participate in the activity and make an easy environment of language learning, and aim of let every students speaking in the class to make them familiar with each other and practice oral speaking on the class. But the preponderance aim is still the grammar, to let the students acknowledge the grammar.

Q4: The teacher gradually communicated and clarified the aims to the students, by holding an activity that let all the students participate in.

Q5: I think that she won’t tell me about the specific aims, only the general one. The specific aims are changing during the process of teaching according to the feedback of the students. For instance, in the video the teacher asked students do they eat ice-cream in the winter and all of the students replied yes, but the teacher suppose that maybe one or two students may reply no so that she could make a negative sentence according to the answer. Then she quickly changed her aim and made other sentences. That is a tiny example of the on-changing specific aims. As a teacher, she probably won’t tell me the plans she had.

Q6: Teachers should let the students know the general aim of the class not the specific one but in the general. In this way, the students could have some expectations of the class and adjust their minds to the coming knowledge. I don’t think this is level-dependent. Teachers should give students hope or expectation of their learning. For example, in the long run, a student can achieve some certain improvement after having several times of class. A teacher should let the students know the general picture of the class, and schedule the specific procedure of the instruction.

Q7: I think the students need to know where the teacher is going in a general direction but the students should not know how the teacher intends to illustrate the knowledge. Because let the students be curious about the teaching procedure is a way to prevent them for getting bored from the class and let them always interested in the class. 

P1030967

P1030967, a photo by T100Timlen on Flickr.

Bookr

Here's the link for my Bookr: A Stray Cat.

Bookr is a very cute and easy-to-use online tool and I made a storybook myself by using it! It's a really cool experience!

I think the objective I can use for Bookr is to help the students learning some specific knowledge, like how to use past tense or to learn some grammar things. By using the Bookr, I use a lot of past tense in order to teach the students how to use the past tense and at the same time make my instruction interesting and attention-grabbing.

The type of story I would have my students create is the story that has a clear storyline and not very abstract. Like I would like my students to telling a story about their Spring Break or to create a fairytale using past tense.

I would not use this tool as my main teaching material, because I found that Bookr's picture search is not that fully developed and I cannot find many nice pictures. I would use it as a "dessert" for my teaching and to give students some different learning experience.

pics

photo by Seantoyer
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Twitter: to talk to the world

  I've read these two articles: Twitter: expanding our class- shrinking the world, and Twimpact: Twitter's impact on my week.

  The first article mainly talked about the teacher used twitter as a media to connect to the world and had his  students to get to know the Greece culture and got an opportunity to communicate and interact with other students who are also studying western culture and they were at that time studying Greece as well. The teacher had his students to have an interaction with those students and being the judges of those students' presentations. I think this kind of twitter-caused class activity is very interesting. At first it helps students to memorize the knowledge well and at the same time make the students realize that they were not alone and  other students in different school are aslo learning the same knowledge they are learning. Also the twitter also promote the interaction within students and students would follow the world events on twitter. I think especially for the language learners and culture learners, it is crucial for them to get to know the language and culture by various ways and really make the students get interested in what they are learning. Using Twitter not only could broaden the horizon of the students' world but could have them more engaged in what they were learning.

  I might use Twitter in my class in order to give my students' a twitter discussion and set a topic and make them discuss and do researches online. Also just like the Twitter: expanding our class- shrinking the world said, I can connect to the world and Skype to students or teachers in other parts of the world and talk to them or chatting with them in order to give my students a more directive and objective impression of what we are currently learning and what other culture is or learn with each other and then get mutual benefits.

  The second article mainly talked about his Twitter experience which is very impressive. He could use Twitter to communicate with many educators, read a lot of articles, get in touch with many friends and learn language. This article reminds me that I also have a Twitter and I used this Twitter to learn English, like I can learn to how to express myself better in English and I must say that the Twitter is a good way to learn language because the language on it is very practical, daily used and authentic. 

  However, as a teacher one thing we should keep in mind is that there are just so many information on the  Twitter, and it is our responsibility to remind our students to pay attention to the Internet safe while learning through the Twitter. Also Twittering may become very time-wasting if the students don't have the self-discipline to control themselves from work procrastinating to browsing other websites.

Learning with computers

  I find it very useful to join this online forum "Learning with computers" on which I could talk with many language teachers and get various answers to different online teaching problems and being updated to many latest teaching information.

  On this website, I can get many practical advice of how to make my class more students-engaged and I can get to know many useful appliances which could enhance my online teaching and I also realize that there are some free resources that could benefit English teacher all over the world which is really a surprising gift to me. I found many worth watching podcasts concerning about TESOL and I shared this link and this forum at once with my friend who is an English teacher in China.

  This free podcast remind me of some free Harvard iTunes U on the apple store. Through these iTunes U I could learn many subjects like business, physics, history, etc. I think these iTunes U are also an application of Connectivism that could benefit learners globally and everyone could have a chance to learn the subjects that they like.

  Through the video New video consortium which made me rethink education and make me realize that network could be a very useful convenient and "love to help" resources, and on the network students could discuss with students or teachers and they could even challenging the teacher. It made me realize that the online source is not "teacher teaching and students receiving knowledge" method, but the online teaching is an interactive teaching method. This video tells a story that the students spontaneously translate the course syllabus into 5 different languages which could help learners from other countries or other languages get the knowledge more easier. This made me realized the power, I mean the overall power of the online students who come from the world and they help each other by translating the syllabus into other languages and they spread this knowledge freely and globally. I think this is really amazing and I think this is where the online teaching charismatic is. To spread the knowledge globally is the thing that classroom teaching really can't do:)

A learner is like a...

  To me, a learner is like a passenger, who is traveling on a train and when the train has arrived its destination, the passenger took off the train and switch to another train, and the train system is extensive and convenient and the train system could take the passenger anywhere at anytime.

  I've learned a little about sociolinguistics and I read about Vygotsky's theory about language learning occurs on two planes, one is inter-relationship and the other is intra-relationship; Learning is not only about the learner himself, but is also occurring between one and the other person. When I read the article "Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age", it is not that unfamiliar to me, because I know that "One of the most persuasive factors is the shrinking half-life of knowledge. The “half-life of knowledge” is the time span from when knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete." Connectivism deepen and strengthen my knowledge of nowadays learning.

  Indeed, "In a knowledge economy, the flow of information is the equivalent of the oil pipe in an industrial economy." And truly, today's knowledge is no longer life-time knowledge. Today's knowledge is half-life of knowledge and "When knowledge is gained to when it becomes obsolete."

  I think to take this online course is not about learning the knowledge of how to integrate online technologies into our teaching, but it is about how to apply this Internet knowledge into facilitating the gaining of our knowledge and our students' knowledge. Just as the video "The Conflict of Learning Theories with Human Nature" says, "To focus less on try to bring knowledge into the mind of a person and more on developing the skills of our learners".

* Click on the high-lighted sentences and you will go to the website links of the related content.

TED is an awesome teaching resource

  The blog named Authentic Teaching and I have read and comment on this blog's post Frank's Frustrated Teaching which is telling a story about a language teacher's frustrated experience. This teacher complains about his students' frustrating cooperation and communication and the learners just don't have the "hot buttons" and the teacher don't know what to do. This situation is worth thinking for every person who is engaged in Education career. 

  I think it is not enough with only the instructor possesses passion. Teachers and students both should have passion. In China, English teachers are often in a awkward position that teachers want to foster students’ interest in English, however on the other hand, they have to be a test preparer who is instructing students how to get a higher grades in exams, instead of giving the students some insight about learning language. Teachers could only stimulate students with if you learn English well you could get a higher points in exams and in the future you would probably go to a famous college and find a better job and earn much money. That’s the way we Chinese English teachers encourage students. So I really want to change the situation.

  After reading Willy C. Cardoso’s post, I get to know the website TED.com which is an awesome website! It covers various interesting topics and I think I could use those video clips in my future English teaching! I think this website could easily arouse students’ interest and give them motivation to learn English well. I mean, it could give them motivation that with learning English well they could really broaden their horizon and get to know the world better!

Let's get started to adapt to this ever changing world!

   I'm writing this post to respond to the video 21st Century Education in New Brunswick, Canada. and the video RSA Animate-Changing Education Paradigms. 

   I have to say that 21st Century Education in New Brunswick, Canada is a really brainstorming and inspiring video to me!! This video makes me think about how dramatically this world has been changed. Indeed, it is a decade ago that I sent a film out to have it developed. When I was in elementary school, I used the pay phone to remind my parents that they forgot to pick me up... However, today, nearly every elementary students got a cell and could contact to their parents or friends just any time they want. Indeed, this video makes me think a lot.

   Just as the question raised in the video that nearly everything around us has been through a big change, what about education? Frankly speaking, before watching this video I don't have much clues about how this online-course would arm me with what kind of knowledge. I just didn't see the future of education career and I just stayed in the circles which has been filled by much old-fashioned and obsolete teaching method knowledge. After watching this video, I realized that the world is a ever changing place and in recent years, it is changing more and more fast. We should get students' attention and try hard to adapt to this changing world and what we can teach has to change as well. Just as the video says, "we must keep pace and stay relevant to keep students engaged."
 
   After watching the video RSA Animate-Changing Education Paradigms. This video has given me much insight about education. The quote "Our education is anesthetizing the students" really shocked me. It's like a wake-up call to me. Nowadays there are way too many distracts like many hi-tech kits, e.g. iPhone, computer games, TV series etc. Compared with these fun and interesting distracts, how can we make our class fun enough to attract our students and at the same time teach them efficiently. What's more, the school is still running just like a factory. "We put the students through the education system by age group." Truly, why do we do that? Can we put more focus on developing students' divergent thinking? These are really worth thinking about questions. Encouraging us teacher-to-be students to have a second thoughts on the questions. At the same time, I'm wondering that if I originally had some creative talents but had been suppressed by traditional teaching method and I myself by no means want to see this kind of situation happen again on my students.

   I will encourage students to think out of the box and always trying to keep pace with the changing world in order to make my class more vivid and interesting.

Some Safe Browsing Advise

Hi, Class!

Before we start to explore this semester’s curriculum, let’s get some Internet safety knowledge together. It is important to keep yourself safe on the Read/Write web.

1.    It is not enough to avoid putting your name, pictures of yourself, and your real living address on the Internet. Our school has its unique Internet, which could filter content that is accessible via the Internet. Some of the Internet content are not suitable for students and by using the school’s Internet, we can browse the Internet safely. We will use the Internet for the sake of improving the corporation between each other, so you as a student should abide by the rule and keep you safe.

2.    Do not post too much content that are concerned about or exposing your personal information. You should get your parents’ approval before you post your personal information online. I will send a letter and also email your parents to help you facilitate and asking permission for your participation into our online collaboration.

3.    You guys should never reveal information about where you live, where your part-time job is and anything else that might expose yourself under any risk of getting kidnaped or hijacked by any potential predators. You could check out this website for more information about Internet safety. Internet safety for kids

4.    Also you should realize that it is not just your classmates and I will get access to your blog, but actually the entire world people could see your blog and get your personal information. It is perfect if you use some nickname online. You can use a cute nickname or pseudonym that only our classmates and I know who you are, which is the name that is exclusive to your acquaintances but totally hide your real name online. Also there's an interesting website which you guys might want to refer to:) safe surfing

5.    If you receive any comments, emails or website links that makes you awkward, please inform your parents as soon as possible. It is important to keep yourself safe on the Internet, so do not hesitate to tell your parents what makes you embarrassed or scared.

6.    If you ever received an email that threatened you or make you scared, you should turn to your parents or teacher for help.

7.    Don't believe anything that claims to give you a chance to win a "free iPad"or a "Macpro"or   anything that is worth a lot of money. Such kind of information should be treated as scam and you should leave them alone and never offer them any information of yours.

8.    Hope we could have a safe and fun semester! I really appreciate your participation online and please always be aware of your safety every time before you post your entry on your blog:)
ii    
I   It is a savvy choice for you to limit your audience if you want to share a lot of information or pictures of yourself with your classmates or acquaintences. You can edit your blog to be only available to people who you've designated as your friends.
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Improve the collaboration between students and make the curriculum more interesting!

• 1.  Enhance the collaboration among students. My major is in TESOL, which is a course that needs a lot of English writings. I think I will let my students write blogs in English every once a week to express their feelings of the week and some understandings of the curriculum. Other students could read and add comments to this student’s post and interact with each other online, which will save a lot of time and also could let the students really thinking about other’s opinion and actually get some insight from their peers. 
• 2. The blog interaction is a stage for student’s learning from each other. This way could give students a more directive way of thinking and encourage them really thinking out of the box and be creative and critical thinking. Furthermore, the blog is not exclusively to the classmates and the teacher, but as the Internet is an open area that even the whole world could see. Probably, people from other counties of the world could share the information and make some comment to interact with your students. 
• 3. As we all know that, with the technology developing time by time, our students also growing up in the circumstance that far advanced than the circumstance we grew up. So interaction online through blog is a trendy way that most of the students preferred and probably thinking this is so cool. Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Also the students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations.
• 4.Standard 2: English language learners communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the area of language arts. Enhance the interaction between the teacher and students. It is a Digital Age, so teaching also should keep pace with the time in order to make your class more vigorous, interesting and more meaningful. It is a way that much easier to encourage or correct your students. For example, if the students have some good sentences in his or her article, as a teacher, you could just post a new entry picking up your students’ good English sentences. In this way, the students could feel encouraged enough to trying their best to learn the course. The students could also discuss about some learning topics with their peers online by writing or record an audio.
• 5. Also as a teacher, I could just add some extra online teaching sources, which are relevant to the curriculum and give the student’s a further understanding of the course. Also having a blog on which the whole class is sharing their information is timesaving. The whole class needn’t to go to school only for a discussion. They could do the discussion effectively at home and students could have different kinds of audiences (like commonly in-class discussion, the teacher divided students into groups and only a few group members could share with the information) Here on blog, the audience is everyone in the class and teacher could easily participate into any discussions and get to know what level had the students achieved.
• 6. Interaction with the parents.Especially for the students who are at lower grades and need more interaction with the parents. The teacher could just tell the parents the website    of the blog and ask them to constantly check it out, having a glimpse of what their children really doing at school and how’s their grades etc. Teachers also could get an instant reply from the parents and to help the students together. All in all, the blog is just so helpful that could bring many benefits to the students, teachers and the parents.
• 7. Check out the reference links below:

blogging for large classes 

advancing digital age learning
These two blog posts did a great job in demonstrating how teachers could integrate blogging teaching into their daily teaching and these two blog posts are so helpful to widen teachers' lesson plan choices.

• 8. Using Internet and blogging to facilitate teaching is a fashionable and trendy way to attract students more and further interact with both students and their parents. Like teachers could observe some typical language errors in the students' daily communication or during class activities, but not speak it in person, because it would harm the face of the students. In a savvy way, the teacher could post an entry on the blog and give some tips and instructions on how to correct those language errors.
• I can put some videos and audios on the blog so that the students could get practiced not only by listening but also by speaking, reading and writing (by post their own reaction or thoughts to the audio or video) that meet the standard of PreK-12 language proficiency standard:
  Listening is an active skill. By highlighting an assortment of listening tasks across standards, the need to involve students in active listening and purposeful listening skills development becomes clear.They could use English to communicate with each other and express their ideas in simple sentences.

During Winter break, I traveled to NYC. a wonderful trip

Here are some pics that I took in NYC during my 5-day trip. I just love NYC so much! Can't wait to visit there again! I like the food there and the weather and the culture. I love everything about NYC. It's a fantastic and vigorous city!

APA格式

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/08/    APA格式标准 UBlearn里给的

My first post

It's rainy day today and after having two classes which are in total six hours I finally get back home with wet hair and clothes. And I check my mailbox found out that I have a due date this midnight! So, I'm here having created my first English blog and posted my first English entry...

I'm the kind of person who is forgettable and always careless.... deep sigh...