Fourth Week Reflection

This week I read two articles: Using the internet in ESL Writing &Three Extensive Reading Activities by Jarek Krajka and Mei-ya Liang in reading section. They are worth reading as they gave me plethora of information regarding the use of email and the handling of the E-books for classroom purpose.

Article by Krajka buttresses the use of internet especially in non-English speaking countries in obtaining the invaluable sources. In his article, he tries to explore how email helps to switch us from teacher-centered to students-centered teaching and learning. According to him, using email in an effective way helps to creating effective learning environment. He strongly advocates the use of web and email in foreign language instruction, mainly because it allures the learners to authentic materials and helps to learn English in international context. His idea on setting up a class page, teaching basic searching skills, showing students how to benefit from the advanced options of the Internet browser, writing e-mails both to each other are worth reading. Besides, he argues that the teachers should be active enough to solve the problem of their students so that they do not feel lost and overwhelmed by technology.

Article by Mei-ya Liang “Three Extensive Reading Activities for ESL/EFL students Using E-books” further gave a way-out to get the authentic material through e-text. As Mei-Liang said such reading would help students not only to read e-texts as their own pace, but to share their text with other students with different abilities and interpretations. Learners can monitor, revise and evaluate their work during the learning process.

The next task we did last week was nicenet discussion on web searching and its relevance on the students. Among the sites given, I found ESL Independent Study Lab-Michael Krauss http://www. Lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks.html helpful in making my students work on grammar and writing section. The comprehensive details in those sections will help me to go through it in details and teach something important to my students. I tried heteronym from htt://legacy.lclark.edu/~krauss/toppicks/toppicks.html helpful in making  my students. I found them curious and very inquisitive to know more.

Afterwards, we were assigned to design a technology enhanced-lesson plan. I don’t know how better I did this task as I did not find the lesson plan in http://www.bcps.org/apps/CBTIA/ in my first two or three attempts and I gave in. Anyway, I did it by collecting the idea from the post of my classmates.

Recalling the moments of Webskills week 4 in nutshell, I found this week a bit hazy probably because I did have hectic schedule and could not give the time that I was supposed to; however, I sneak into my study room and tried my best to go through it as far as possible.

Sitaram