21st Century Students... Funny ^_^

Facts Teachers Must know about Auditory Learners

Auditory learners are very good listeners. They tend to absorb information in a more efficient manner through sounds, music, discussions, teachings, etc. These individuals will be more likely to record lectures so that they can replay them at a later time for study purposes.

 

They appreciate books on tape and may find that reading aloud will help them to retain information.

Rather than written reports, auditory learners tend to do better on oral presentations and reports.

 

· Utilize audiotapes for learning

· Read information aloud when studying

· Ask questions

· Watch videos

· Use word association techniques to remember facts

· Participate in class discussions

· Record directions and notes

· Listen to taped notes

· Avoid auditory distractions

· Participate in a study group or study with a study partner

· Make up songs or rhymes to go along with the pertinent material

· Use rhymes to recall dates, names, facts, etc.

· Write of steps in sentence form and then read them out loud

 

Best test style for auditory learner-oral exam, writing responses to lectures

Worst test style for auditory learner-reading comprehension.

Interactive Lectures...

What is Interactive Lectures?

Interactive lectures are classes in which the instructor incorporates engagement triggers and breaks the lecture at least once per class to have students participate in an activity that lets them work directly with the material. The engagement triggers capture and maintain student attention and the interactive lecture techniques allow students to apply what they have learned or give them a context for upcoming lecture material.

The Basic Structure of Interactive Lecture

 The goal of interactive lecture is to engage students by finding ways for them to interact with the content, the instructor, and their classmates. Accordingly, interactive lectures include segments of lecture combined with segments where students interact. 

One of the things that makes the lecture interactive is the ability of the instructor to choose the content of the lecture segments based on the students' needs. If students have difficulty answering a question, or an activity goes astray in many or most student groups, it's time to find a new and better way to deal with the material.

Instructors can also think of the value of format change during a class period in two ways.

1. Format change is valuable in its own right for recapturing attention and engaging students.
2. Also, the new format is often a better way to teach a topic or get a point across.

All of the activities used to make lectures interactive involve a learning curve for both instructors and students. Instructors must learn how to develop good questions, analyze the student responses, and incorporate that information into the following lecture segment or the next class period.

As with many active-learning techniques, interactive lectures may take longer to cover any given topic than non-interactive ones. Mazur (1997) recommends that the lecturer save time by only going over more difficult and important material rather than duplicating the coverage of the textbook.



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Tips Teachers Must Know about Visual Learners

-  Visual students are the ones who learn through what they are able to see with their own eyes. 

-  They are those students who jockey for the positions at the front of the class, must have front row theater seats and love to be right up front for sporting events in order to obtain the best view.

 

-  Visual learners have a tendency to describe everything that they see in terms of

appearances. 

-  These learners love visual aids such as photos, diagrams, maps and graphs. 

-  Visual learners frequently are good writers and will commonly perform quite well on written assignments.

-  They always:  

 

· Ask for written directions

· Utilize diagrams and flow charts for note taking

· Color code notes

· Visualize spelling of words or facts that must be memorized

· Write down key points

· Copy what is on the board

· Sit near the front of the classroom

· Watch videos

· Use highlighters to mark important points in notes

· Use graph paper in order to make diagrams and charts for key points

· Utilize illustrations to remember important material

· Utilize visual metaphors to associate relevant content

· Write down explanations for points that are difficult

Lesson Plan for Class Journals

Aims
• To set up a class journal with a group
• To build the writing habit, by doing several journal writing activities during the class
• To read what other students have written in response to the tasks set
• To reflect on learning and to discuss this in class
• To discuss class attitudes to error and correction, and establish the correction guidelines for the teacher

Age group
Secondary, adult

Level
A2 and above

Time
1.5 hours approx.

Materials
1. Lesson plan
2. Class set of blank journals

Introduction
The following lesson plan suggests how a ‘first lesson’ with class journals might be set up, in
order to introduce students to the idea, and to get them working with journals from the beginning
of a course or period of study.

The kind of class journal in this lesson plan is designed to get the students writing freely in a
range of different ways. The emphasis is on fluency, as opposed to any kind of genre writing, and
could be compared to the kind of oral fluency activities that we do with students. Rather than
focusing on accuracy, or a particular style, we want students to use their language resource to
express their ideas in any way that seems best to them; in this way, we will help them to build a
writing habit, and to write more confidently. For more background about using class journals,
please see the Teaching English article that links to this lesson plan.

Lesson plan

Procedure

1. Creating a front cover

• Use the journals that students have brought with them, or give the
students journals that you have brought, which could be made by
stapling a number of A4 sheets together, preferably with a colourful card
cover.

• On the front cover, students draw a ‘shield’ and, in each quadrant of the
shield, they draw images of things that they identify with in some way.
The first quadrant might represent their neighbourhood/home. The
second one could be their hobbies. The third one a place that they have
visited / like very much and the fourth one could represent a favourite
person/ pet / belonging.

• Once they have finished, they swap journals, and describe their shields
to their partners.

2. First page of the journal

• Set students a personalised writing task. If you often start a course by
writing a personal letter to the students, they could read your letter at
this point, and write a reply to it in their journal. You can ask them to
include similar information to you.

• If you are introducing the journals later in the course, you could set up a
personalised task like this:

Write the list below on the board.

3 things that you enjoy doing
3 people that are important to you
3 places that you’ve been to / would like to go to
3 things you did last weekend
3 things you own which are important to you
3 items of clothing that you like – what is their ‘history’?
3 films / books / TV programmes that you like, and why you like them.

• Ask students to choose 1, 2 or 3 categories to include on the first page
of their journals. They should write as much information as they can in
about 10 minutes. Play some background music while students are
writing.

• After 10 minutes, students swap their journals and read someone else’s.
They should try to find at least one thing in common with their partner.

3.Learning questionnaire:

second page of the journal

• Students turn to page 2 of the journal. Dictate the following sentence
stems to the students. They have to write the sentences and complete
them, so that they are true for themselves.

I think that learning English is…
The most difficult to me about English is…
The easiest thing is...
The best way to remember vocabulary is...
I will get better at speaking if I...
One way for me to improve my English at home is to...
I want to speak English in order to...

• Once they have finished, set up a pyramid discussion as below:
Firstly, students compare their ideas in pairs, and add new ones to the
list if they want. Secondly, the pairs join up to make groups of four.
Finally, conduct feedback as a whole class.

4. Character writing

• Show the students the following YouTube clip. Students watch the clip
and discuss the following: What is being advertised? Is it being done
effectively?

The Power of Words:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzgzim5m7oU&feature=youtu.be

• Divide the class into 2 groups. One group is the blind man and the
other is the woman who helps.

• Each student writes about 100 words about the event from their own
perspective - What happened? How did they feel? What did they think
of the other character?

• After 10 minutes, students swap their journals, and read what the other
person has written. They then write a comment to their partner at the
end of the paragraph, e.g. I like your description / what do you mean
by…? / You explain your ideas very well etc.

• Another good ‘character writing’ activity could be based on fairy stories.
For example, tell students the story of Little Red Riding Hood (if they
don’t already know it).

• Students adopt different characters (the wolf, Little Red Riding Hood,
the grandmother) and write the story from their perspective. When they
finish, students swap journals to read each other’s stories.

5. Follow-up discussion and error correction

• Draw the students’ attention to the way that they rounded off the
previous activity. Did they enjoy reading their partners’ text? Did they
enjoy reading the comments in response? Why / why not?

• Explain that the teacher can respond to their journals by writing an
evaluative comment, and/or by correcting the language errors.

• Ask students to work in groups of 3 for 5 minutes, to discuss the
advantages & disadvantages of:

a) Writing evaluative comments (no error correction)
b) Correcting errors (no other comments)

• Then carry out open class feedback, to find out their views.

• Explain that you may not be able to correct every single error in their
journal, but that you can adapt your correction to their preferences. Ask
each student to write a brief comment about how they would like their
journal writing to be corrected, in the back cover of the journal.

• If you decide to use a correction code with your class, this would be a
good moment to introduce the code, and to get students to write the
symbols at the back of their journal, for future reference.

* A good idea is to show them some examples of previous journals that
you’ve marked.
6. Final feedback

• Ask students to discuss the following in groups, with regard to their
attitudes towards writing in English and carry out open class feedback
at the end. Hopefully students will recognise that, although they may
feel initially reluctant about writing activities, these activities can be
very powerful tools in helping them to improve their level of English.

- Do you enjoy writing in your own language? Why / why not?
- Do you enjoy writing in English? Why / why not?
- Do writing activities in English help you to learn the language? Why
/ why not?
- Do you like to discuss learning habits in English?
- Do you think you can become a better learner if you think about the
way that you learn?

Follow-up activities

Once journals have been introduced into the class, they can form a regular part
of the lesson. They can be used at different moments in the class, with or
without background music. Students can also be encouraged to write in them
at home, describing the events of their week.
Some suggested follow up activities:

1. Media diary

Students write about the different ‘media’ that they have been watching or
reading. This could include TV programmes, films at the cinema or on DVD,
websites that they have been looking at, magazines, books, etc.

2. Learning styles

Students can do a learning styles questionnaire, and write up their findings in
their journal. They can swap journals to find out about other students’ learning
styles.

3. Track your happiness!
Students can draw a chart with the days of the past week, and a face that
represents their attitude on those days, e.g. a happy face if it was a good day/
cross face if they got annoyed/worried face if they had a test, etc. Then
students write a short description of their week & their feelings about it.

4. Vocabulary stories
For this activity, students choose a number of different words that have come
up in the class. These could come from a class ‘word bag’. They talk to a
partner about how they can link as many of the words as possible into a story,
and both partners write the story in their journals. Students can then read out
the story, or swap journals. In the next class, students can then reflect on the
activity itself.


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By: Khadija Muhammad

Types of Blogs to Be Used in ELT

There are three types of Weblogs for use in ESL classrooms

The Tutor Blog

This is a type of weblog that is run by the tutor for the learners. It serves the following purposes:

• It gives daily reading practice to the learners. Sometimes students find assigned reading material too boring, difficult, or hard to relate with. This is because it is often written with another purpose in mind. So who better to write to them than the person who knows them best: the teacher. Entries are kept short, geared towards the learner interest, and linked to related online sources for further reading if desired. Vocabulary used in class can be recycled this way. New vocabulary words can be linked to definitions on other sites found with a search engine. Furthermore, a casual, natural writing style can be used by the tutor to develop learner familiarity with native language patterns.
   
• It promotes exploration of English websites. Any entry made by the tutor can and ought to encourage further exploration of the Internet in English by linking to related articles, and content based websites. For those learners reluctant to step outside the comfort of exploring the Web in their native language, being led to interesting English language sites will increase their confidence and help to overcome their aversion.
   
• It encourages online verbal exchange by use of comment buttons. At the bottom of each entry, any blog reader can make a comment that can be read and further commented on by all who access the site. Ask your students questions, give them riddles, challenge their views; whatever it takes to encourage them to comment.
   
• It provides class or syllabus information. Entries in the blog can also serve to remind students about homework assignments and upcoming discussion topics. Links can be provided to sites that introduce relevant topics of discussion. The tutor can also follow up on difficult areas of classroom work that might need review or clarification. In addition, a permanent link to the classroom syllabus and rules can be included on the blog.
   
• It serves as a resource of links for self-study. In the right and/or left margins of the blog, permanent links can be set-up and organized to aid the learner in self-study, for example links to online quizzes, English news sites, key-pal networks, audio and video files for listening practice and ESL interactive websites.

The Learner Blog

These are blogs that are either run by individual learners themselves or by small collaborative groups of learners. In ESL, learner blogs may be best suited for reading and writing classes. A common reading assignment can be followed by blog postings on the thoughts of each learner or group of learners. Furthermore, the act of constructing the blog may encourage the use of search engines and net surfing in English to find the appropriate sites to which links can be made.  This will empower the learner to direct the reader to sites of choice for further reading. Individually, blogs can be used as journals for writing practice, or as free-form templates for personal expression. The idea here is that students can get writing practice, develop a sense of ownership, and get experience with the practical, legal, and ethical issues of creating a hypertext document. In addition, whatever they write can instantly be read by anyone else and, due to the comment features of the software, further exchange of ideas is promoted. Tutors can even run a mega-blog of select topics of interest gleaned from student blogs so that the broader issues are brought into focus on a single website.

The Class Blog

This type of blog is the result of the collaborative effort of an entire class. The following are some possible uses:

• In conversation-based classes it could be used like a free-form bulletin board for learners to post messages, images, and links related to classroom discussion topics. It could also be a space for them to post thoughts on a common theme assigned for homework.
   
• With intermediate and advanced learners, class blogs might also useful for facilitating project-based language learning, where learners can be given the opportunity to develop research and writing skills by being asked to create an online resource for others.
   
• Class blogs could also be used as a virtual space for an international classroom language exchange.  In this scenario, learners from different countries would have joint access and publishing rights to the blog. The entire exchange would then be transparent to all readers and could be followed and commented on by other learners, tutors, parents and friends.
   
• For reading and writing classes, it might also involve the use of knowledge management software, like Userland's Manila, that allows for a great deal of threaded discussion behind the scenes. Much like a publishing group, individual learners can be given varying amounts of responsibility to publish material arising from postings on the discussion list. The results of this effort are what is seen on a website by the public at large.

 

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