TLL Week 4 Part2: Technology to teach Writing

In this week, I also learned about technology to teach writing. I got it, that actualy we can enable technology in each skill of learning language. Also, there are many technology that provide writing learning. The most familiar and popular is blog. Before that, I want to give brief explanation about the role of writing in SLA.  According to Chen (2010), writing and reading has similar function which both of them share the same cognitive and social process. 
In writing, students learn how to interpreting and constructing meaning from text. There are many specific areas of writing, for instance academic writing or relfective writing. Thus, in writing there also four main focuses; form-focused approach, process-foccused approach, content-based approach, reader/audience-dominated approach. Good writing is depend on what focus we want to concern.


In form-focused approach, the famous techniques is drill and practice. In the internet, there are a lot website that provide excersice of drill and practice. For instance, ESL Blue, Guide to Grammar and Writing.


Process focussed Approach concern more on process and emphasize learned-centered task in which students feel free to control their own writing, how they write it, and evaluate it. Here students are allowed to have multiple drafts and do many editing until they feel their writing is good. Students can use computer and email to ask for revision to the teachers. 


Content-based Approach focus on contents. There are also many website that provide many collection of good lesson plan, such as encyclopedia.com. The last is reader/audience-dominated approach. It means that put all the focuse above to get greater attention to the readers.


There are some blogs that can make students enjoy writing in the internet. For example are blogspot, wordpress, tumblr,  and wigg. Each of them has different characteristics. Blogspot is the easiest blog to facilitate a new begginer of bloger. It’s because there are a lot of choices and we can use simple html code. We put it anything in simple way, just click and it will appears. I use blogspot since I was in junior high school. The setting is not complicated and it can look like a professional blog if we add some widget there.


Writing with technology is more fun rather than write by pencils. Because there also some correction if we misspelled some words. That’s all about my reflection in this week. Sayonaraaa~

TLL Week4: Technology to Teach Language!

Welcome to my fourth TLL reflection! 

This week we learned about some fun techonology to enable listening, speaking, reading and writing comprehension. As stated by Chen (2010), listening comprehension which precede speaking skill make the learners more familiar with the new language. Hence, if we want to focus on enhance our students’listening skill we should emphasize meaning rather than grammar itself. 

There are two approaches to teach listening skills, the natural approach and the total physical response (TPR).  Krashen and Terrel (2983) said that in natural approach, language production is supposed to be step by step from nonverbal responses to complex sentences. The content itself should meet the students’interest. We can search about interactive audio-picture lesson in the internet, there are many of them. The interesting one that we found this week was from british council. In TPR, teacher ask the students to listen only. While speaking the target language, teacher give illustration. Teacher also can give students command and they will respond it by physically doing the action. We can use TPR games, the students listen the words and point out which picture is suitable based on the listening. There are also some live action of TPR.

According to Chen (2010), to teach speaking skills for beginners we can use Audiolingualism, TPR, Natural Approach, silent way, and suggestopedia. While for more advanced level we can use communicative language teahing. SchMOOze university is interesing to use. It uses MOOs (Multi-user domain and Object Oriented)

From the example above, there are limitation which is every technology only concern in their basic field. For instance, schMOOze only help in speaking, no listening or writing there. However, there is a program named VoiceThread. It can enhance all of the skills; listening, speaking, writing, and reading. You can upload your documents, slides, presentations, pictures, videos, and voice. The most interesting is you also can comment it using five ways; typing, recording, video, pictures, and via telphone. VoiceThread is related to all skills so I think it’s evective because packaged in one time. However, if we want to use it we have to pay. That’s the limitation.

References:

Chen, C.F.E. “Computer Assisted Language Learning and Teaching” retrieved August 12 2010, from http://www2.nkfust.edu.tw/~emchen/CALL as in TLL Module

TLL Week3: From CALL to MALL

In the session three, I learnt about Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). Basically this way is more effective than CALL ─that we had learnt in the previous session. It shows on the great differences of them. We can use MALL anywhere and anytime we want. Otherwise CALL is not. According to Kukulska-Hulme and Shield (2008), “MALL differs from computer-assisted language learning in its use of personal, portable devices that enable new ways of learning, emphasizing continuity or spontaneity of access and interaction across different contexts of use.” 

There are iPod, PDA, and mobile phone as some examples of MALL. Based Kukulska-Hulme and Shield, MALL already applied at Duke University. The collage gives each student an iPod as a media to learn language. They do a recording to record their oral assignment, and listening material from native speaker. Indisputable, the existence of technology indeed make learning and teaching process more interesting and fun. For the resume, there are three advantages of MALL. First, it is cheaper than a computer. Second, we can use it anywhere we want as a portable tool. The last is we can manage to our own time whenever we want. Besides, it will help students much to receive direct feedback from teacher, other students, or tutor. 

As we know, technology grows rapidly from time to time. PDA is not really as popular as it used to be. Nowadays, there are Tablet and iPad that changes PDA. Besides all of these, MALL also has several disadvantages. The quality of MALL is not as good as CALL. We can’t have such a high quality of video or anything as CALL have. Sometimes, we can’t access some data because it is not prepared on MALL device. With the term of MALL, it makes us seem to have an autism syndrome. The basic reason is we have our own world in our hands, like autistic people. We will lack of social relationship in the real world. Students in the future will become a socially awkward people. They will do not know how to build a relationship with others.

However, for learning language, I still consider MALL as an effective device to be enabled at learning and teaching activity. The reason of portable itself make it easier than CALL. I will wait Indonesia use this device, not just a computer lab or language lab which is still debatable and can not work properly.