Friday, November 03, 2006
The article by LeLoup and Ponterio (2006) provides an overview of the ‘most useful’ Internet sites. The overview was compelled as a result of the Foreign Language Teaching [online] Forum – the project for foreign language (FL) teachers where they had to nominate and describe the most FL useful websites.
There are many websites mentioned in the article. Here are some of them.
1) Google search engine site. It is suggested that not many FL teachers pay attention to ‘advanced search’ [on the write hand-side of the main search box – NZ], which provides students/teachers with different information on any language. It can be used as a quick L2 to L1 dictionary or thesaurus to verify the word, cultural item, grammatical structures etc.
2) FL and special needs website. It’s an online bibliography of 1400 references on modern foreign languages and special educational needs. For instance, if someone is interested in teaching English literacy in year 7, they can go to this site, click on ‘basic skills in subject’, then choose 'English' and look through the references.
3) If someone is interested in ESL teaching in the
4) The Quia website provides activities/quizzes templates for on-line activities [something like our HP, but there is a yearly-fee charge involved – NZ].
Thursday, November 02, 2006
My respond to Nilly’s and Yvonne’s comments.
Thank you, guys, for your very prompt and kind comments. I start with positive reflections.
I think that Website creation was one of the best experiences through the whole course. The reason is that I had more experience from the WebQuest creation and was a bit more relaxed. As a result, I had more time to concentrate on creative and educational parts of the site. I was remembering my Russian students and building my site according to their interests, abilities and ELP level. My students were very flexible, open and ready to experiment. They also could appreciate a good joke so there was an Ozzie slang activity + American vs. British English Quiz activity.
I didn’t nominate the age of my students on the front page of my site. [The reason is that I didn’t want to bound other teachers/students. If they feel that the site is suitable for them so let it be]. Yvonne guessed correctly – the site is for adults with advanced ELP level. The time limit is chosen according to my students’ abilities. It’s variable, and another teacher is most welcome to change it. In fact, teachers can change anything on the site. Remember, that I constructed it strictly for my audience. I think that Yvonne asked why not to make activities more colourful. You are welcome to do it Yvonne. :-) I didn’t because I think the moderate background is very good for a complex and complicated test/activity. It doesn’t distract. There is a bright and ‘speaking’ picture on the top, which prepares students for each activity. Besides, there are a lot of colours on the home page. I thought a bit of calmative contrast would be nice.
The other remark from Yvonne was that she would like to see hints on the same page as activities (so students don’t have to go to the mane page). That’s the idea! That’s advanced ELP level! I wanted them to go through the Useful links first and then start activities. My students were very lazy (in a good way) – they would rely on their memory and would use the main page again only as a last resort.
Nilly was very kind to me. [Thank you!] She found some proofreading mistakes [I gave it to a NS!!! He corrected some minor things and told me it was fine!] Nilly also suggested me to expand Rhyming activity from 1 question to some more. Nilly, for the record – there are 7 of them. You just need to click on ‘show all questions’ on the left-hand side of the page. ;-) I was very pleased that Nilly noticed my effort with Russian equivalents of English muffins and biscuits (question 3 of American vs. British English Quiz activity). I knew that cookery was not one of the strongest sides of my students so I thought they would appreciate some help.
Overall, I attempted to create a fun, interesting, entertaining and educational website. Since it was created as a final activity for the whole topic [International English], I thought that entertainment side would be appropriate on the main page with a bit of education on activities pages. Since there is not much authenticity in Russian schools [not enough authentic literature + communication with NSs of English], I incorporated as much authentic websites as appropriate for a 90-minutes workshop [which is all about reading - so I didn't want them to feel overloaded].
