WEB-BASED LESSON PLAN

The following is a web-based lesson plan that focused on the reading skills. This lesson plan requires students to read the information from a website : www.imdb.com and extract information from it into the worksheet given to them.

Below is the link to the lesson plan and the worksheet

Lesson Plan & Worksheet

Hyper text and Hypermedia Example

The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
 Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

II

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
 How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

 III
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?"
Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
 The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Hot Potatoes Review

"Hot Potatoes, it is a software suite that helps its user to create simple exercises using five application  JCloze, JCross, JMatch, JMix and JQuiz."

As a Diploma in IT (Programming) graduate, I can say that I have a lot of experiences using authoring and programming software in creating application software. I have developed a number of software, applications and animations intended for educational purposes. The only problem that I faced when developing such program was I need to prepare everything from a scratch and it requires a lot of time to finish it. Being introduced to HotPotatoes really solves the problem for me. It works as an exercise template generator that allows its user to create simple computerized exercises with minimal workloads in a minimum time limit. It is perfect for teachers that have a little knowledge on computer to utilize computer technology into their teaching.  I wish I've come across this software a lot sooner before my practicum as I could have used it to create interesting exercises for my students. But there's nothing to gain by regretting the past. The only thing I can do now is to fully utilize the software to its advantage so that i can create an interesting lesson for my students.

HotPotatoes sample: JCloze & JMatch exercises

http://www.mediafire.com/download/7xtqqy6zalj3okw/Jmatch.zip

http://www.mediafire.com/download/f3ffzyqqkm6u9d6/Jcloze.zip

TASK 2: Journal Article Review

Journal Article Review

Title: USING BLOGS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITING CLASSES

Journal-Volume: International Journal of Academic Research Vol. 3. No. 4. July, 2011, II Part

Author’s Information: Masoud Hashemi & Vahid Najafi, faculty member of English Department, Islamic Azad Yniversity, Toyserkan & Kangavar branch

            The authors started this paper with information that a lot of EFL/ESL teachers have used the user-friendly technology (blog) into their classroom instruction and language learning. However, they found out that only a small number of ESL/EFL teachers in Iran have used Blog in writing lesson. The focus of their study is to show and discuss the capabilities and advantages of using weblogs in increasing the writing skill of Iranian college students. They also wanted to find out about the reactions and feedback of Iranian college learners who experienced the usage of blog in their writing class for the first time. Their study was conducted by following these objectives:

1. To determine the usefulness of using blogs to encourage learner independence and out of class learning.
2. To provide insight for other EFL professionals into the pedagogical applications of using blogs in the foreign language writing class.

The methodology the authors have used in this journal was that participants were divided into two groups of 30 people. Both groups were male and female English Translation and Literature students who took English Advanced Writing course. Participants in both groups were given instruction on how to construct a blog at the beginning of the study. In one class, the use of blog was strongly encouraged but not required. On the other hand, the use of blog in another class was required and it counted 20% of their final grade. A blog survey to gather feedback from participants was conducted at the end of this study. Participants were also required to write self-introduction post in their blogs. Selected few articles was chosen from participants’ blog to be posted on the instructors’ blog. Then they were told to comments on those articles. Learners were responsible for writing one entry of 150 words per week, and commenting on two or three of their own posts. The study results stated that majority 80% of the participants and the teachers never heard about blog because of the limited knowledge on computers’ technology. However, all of the learners responded that they enjoyed the blog project. The reasons they enjoyed using blog are:

1. They enjoyed interacting with classmates and learning from them.
2. They thought their writing skills had improved from participating in the project.
3. The project assisted them in learning and using new vocabulary.

However, 6 learners found the project time-consuming or wished they could have had class time to complete the assignment. Almost all of the learners respond positively in the comment section of their friend’s post. Majority of the participants stated that they will continue blogging after the study. But it depends on the time they had.

       This research interests me in a very special way. The reason I fell interested is because the majority of the participants have no experiences in using blog. Thus it provides an authentic situation where they researchers have the opportunity to gather information that is not influenced by the participants’ prior knowledge on the subject matter. As for the method used, I think that the research was conducted in a very well prepared manner. They prepared the participants with enough knowledge at the beginning of the study. They also managed to create two different groups of participants that they can use to compare the results. They also give the chance for participants to write freely and give comment on each other’s work. It somehow lessened the technicality of the study on order to provide a stress free environment so that participants’ will not be influenced by stress factors. Participants felt motivated by the study because they feel that they were actually helping each other to improve. However, the thing that needs more attention in this study is the time limit. Some students commented that they did not have enough time to complete the task. . Regarding on how this research will affect the implementation of teaching learning of ESL in Malaysian context, I think it provide a very valuable insight on how to improve the current method. As we already know, we’re living inside a technological booming era where the use of technology cannot be avoided anymore. Most of the Malaysian’s students already have the knowledge on technology; it depends on the teachers to use this as an advantage to help with the teaching and learning English language. However, we must proceed carefully because some students still do not have the means to fully integrate the change into their way of study. We must overcome the technological limitations first before we can really tap into the advantages of using technology in the process of teaching and learning English language.

The Journal:

http://www.mediafire.com/view/8ozdalzwozcwsq6/USING_BLOGS_IN_ENGLISH_LANGUAGE_WRITING_CLASS.pdf

ESL Website Evaluation (ESL GAMES WORLD)

There are a lot of ESL website available online where teachers & students can refer and use it to facilitate them in teaching and learning english language. I had found out one particular ESL website that is interesting, and the website is ESL Games World ( http://www.eslgamesworld.com/ )

These are my evaluation on this website. I made this evaluation by following a set of questions given to me during TSL 641 CALL class session:

1.   The ESL website I have found does not focus on teaching any specific component of the English language. However it emphasizes more on helping or facilitates the teacher and students during the lesson by providing fun online, printable and interactive ESL related games. There are varieties of games included in this website such as grammar, listening and speaking, vocabulary and pronunciations games. Types of exercise or games that can be found in this website are grammar snake and ladder, Grammar Jeopardy, Sentence Monkey and many more. As for the immediate feedback, only online ESL games have this function, while the printable board games for sure do not have it. There are different levels of difficulty to cater for every proficiency levels in this website. 

2.     In this Website, what a learner can do is to use all the games and exercises in the website to help them gain a better understanding after or during the English lesson. They can either do it with their teacher or do it alone because of the immediate feedback function it has.

3.   One game in particular reminded me with something I had done with my students. The “Present and Present Continuous (Progressive) Hangman Game” is a game I use to facilitate my lesson with the students. On some occasions, when I detect that my students were getting bored, I integrated the game of hangman into my lesson to make it more interesting. The difference was I used the manual method rather than computerized method. However, if I got the chance to use the computerized method, I'm sure it will be more interesting for them.

4.    The website offers something that cannot be done in textbook/workbook. The website contains dynamic exercise & games which students can have a two way interaction like getting a feedback right after the answer. Some of the games also allow students to be in teams and fight with other team which make more interesting than a textbook activity.

5.  One of the theories that I can detect is the Communicative Language Teaching with the Interactive Learning approach. By using this website students will engage in a significant amount of group work. They will be exposed to the authentic usage of the language and at the same time perform a task that will prepare them for actual usage of the language.

6.   Esl games world has the potential needed for language learning. It is because all the activities in the website integrate language elements inside it. Like the hangman game, it focus on grammar, vocabulary and spelling, while jeopardy integrates grammar component  and students need to provide the right form of the language in order to answer it. Not to mention all the games are suitable to be included in English lesson and the games are fun.

7.      In the future in would definitely use this website when teaching English. It is because this website contains lots of games that related to the subject matter. Not to mention my lesson will be more interesting and students will be motivated.

In-class assignment 2 (Excel MCQ exercise English Simple Past Tense)

This is the second in-class assignment on English Simple Past tense for beginner learners of English Language. This exercise was created using Microsoft Office Excel. It will give students immediate feedback after they finished answering the questions.

Here is the link for the exercise:

Simple Past Tense MCQ exercise

2nd in-class assignment

A simple exercise on part of speech that utilizes the functions inside Microsoft Office Word software.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/jo669wxon7z9uz5/Parts+of+Speech+Exercise.docx