Computer’s Technology to Assessed Language

Rate 3.5

I read the article “Assessing language using computer technology” and I would like to focus on the construction of computer assisted language tests (CALT’s) because this is a very useful tool at the time of evaluating students’ English skills and knowledge because of its suitability when getting scores and creating the tests. Some of the advantages of CALT are that teachers are able to control the time that the test will take, select multiple choices questions, and add audios and videos to the exams in order to make it interactive. There are some things to improve in the listening and writing skills on CALT at the time of measuring and also the high cost of implementing computer assisted language tests (CALT’s) in schools is a disadvantage; however there are more positive characteristics such as the ones mentioned above. To conclude, I would like to say that as a teacher I strongly believe that by applying the computer assisted language tests (CALT’s) we have a suitable way to score our students grade, to save time and to control the tests.

Making a group work significant.

Rate 4

According to what I read in the articles “Maximizing the Benefits of Project Work in Foreign Language Classrooms” and “Seven Essentials for Project-Based Learning” I can say that working in groups can be meaningful for students; however, the educator has to do this work meaningful by applying the group work correct in order to reach that goal I would like to quote something from the reading, Lamer and Mergendoller stated that “A project is meaningful if it fulfills two criteria. First, students must perceive the work as personally meaningful, as a task that matters and that they want to do well. Second, a meaningful project fulfills an educational purpose. Well-designed and well-implemented project-based learning is meaningful in both ways” (p. 1). As we can see creating a significant group work is not that easy; first, students need to be somehow motivated to feel this work like a personally meaningful task. Second, there must be a purpose on that work because we cannot have students doing work group without any sense. A good example of a meaningful work group will be:

Work group: students need to form groups of 5 students (they can work with whoever they want), they will research about the most important news around the world in the last month (students will be free to choose the kind of news that they will be looking). Then, students will have to work in groups and write the new that they like the most in past tense. After that, students have to send the new to my email. Teacher will send feedback with comments and corrections after revising the homework.

I think that this will be a good work group because students are free to choose what they like so their opinion counts; second, they can choose the people that they will be working on it in order to be comfortable; also, students will cooperate with each other and choose the new that the like the most on order to write it in past tense. In this homework students will be using technology to look for the most recent news (innovation will be applied). At the end, students will get their feedback to realize their mistakes and correct them so they will be getting a significant learning through cooperation and the application of technology.

Interaction, a very powerful tool to enhance student’s participation.

Rate 5

According to what I read in the articles “10 benefits of getting students to participate in classroom discussion”, “Increase students interaction with think pair shares and circle chats” and also in the presentation interactive power point, I would like to say that participation is one of the most important factor throughout the learning process; that is why we have some techniques to enhance the students’ participation such as blank slide, Quick Quiz: ConcepTest, Think, Pair, Share technique and some others. Even though we have a lot of techniques to interact, I think that the most effective ones are: Think-Pair-Share and the Circle Chat because in these two techniques we can see a very good interaction between students and teachers. First, The Think-Pair-Share technique students are given time to think, process the information, think in the correct way to share this information and share it; thus, the Think-Pair-Share technique is a very effective tool to enhance interaction. Second, we have the Circle Chat which is an activity that applies a student-student interaction, what I really like about this technique is that each student have the opportunity to speak and share his/her thoughts. Concluding, I would like to say that applying these techniques students will be able to develop an interaction in the classroom that will help them to share information and also they will be encouraged to practice a cooperative learning.

Four out of Twenty Ideas for Using Mobile Devices in the Second Language Classroom.

Rate 5

According to what I read in the article “Twenty Ideas for Using Mobile Phones in the Language Classroom” I can say that this is a very interesting article which provides some inquisitive ways to apply mobile devices to education; however, there are a lot of ideas that I do not agree with because I do not see them as a meaningful tool to learn a language. I would like to focus on ideas number 12, 16, 19 and 20. First of all, on idea number 12 which is “Use the mobile phone for social networking” I think that social networking is a very useful tool to put in practice every kid of language; furthermore, mobile devices give us the option to do some social networking. Second, on idea number 16 which is “Use mobile phone memory to distribute reading material” I strongly believe that mobile devices are a great help to read and having reading materials in our mobile devices really help us to read everywhere we are and to save time as well. Then, on idea number 19 that is “Use the mobile phone to check student comprehension and get feedback” as you may know there are a lot of websites, applications, etc. that allow teachers and student to interact, in that way students are able to get feedback from their teacher among other activities. To finish, we have idea number 20 that is “mobile phone memory for research and data collection” Obviously with the technology that we have access nowadays, mobile devices are an easy tool to have easy access to internet that is why students are able to search for meaningful information about whatever topic they want. Although there are 20 ideas about the application of mobile devices, I only focused on 4 which are the ones that I consider help a lot to students.

Technology to enhance the students´ reading and vocabulary

Rate 5

According to what I read in the articles “Using Technology to Assist in Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension” and “ Online English – English learner dictionaries boost word learning” I realized that by applying technology to vocabulary and reading comprehension, students can get a significant knowledge in these two aspects of language. Although reading is an important skill that involves the reader, the reader needs to know the vocabulary of what he/she is reading; so, why don’t we use technology to enhance these two important aspects of language? Technology has a lot of benefit at the time of learning but this time we are focusing on reading comprehension and vocabulary, so here we have some ways to enhance the reader’s skill. When students are reading, technology can reinforce their vocabulary through the application of online dictionaries because this can be very useful at the time of reinforcing the learning o words; in order to do that, teachers have to encourage students to be more strategic word learners by selecting dictionaries with the best word frequency features. Moreover, we have more techniques that teachers can apply on students in order to reinforce their vocabulary such as collocations, using authentic examples and topical vocabulary. Despites all that, we have the use of multimedia for vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension, there are some ways to enhance the students’ vocabulary and reading skill such as using multimedia glosses which is interaction of a media software with learners in order to improve the vocabulary acquisition. To conclude, we can say that technology is such a useful tool to enhance the reading and vocabulary that teachers should apply these techniques in their classrooms.

Cooperative Learning and online tools to enhance the writing skill

Rate 5

According to what I read in the articles “Process Writing and the Internet: Blogs and Ning Networks in the Classroom” and “Online Collaborative Writing Using Wikis” I realized that there are a lot of ways to enhance the writing skill in students such as blogs that are used to post information by authors. Also, we can apply networking sites in order to enhance students’ writing skill, the networking provides tools that allows the users to upload videos, photos, etc. to their profile. I personally think that updating information either by blogs or networking is very useful to motivate students to write and share the writings in an interactive way which is something interesting and motivating for students. Moreover, we have the wiki that is a website that allows students to edit the information posted at any time they want; therefore, students are able to practice a cooperative learning by writing because students have the opportunity to modify and correct what have been written; therefore, everybody cooperates in order to get a good result.

Internet resources as an alternative to motivate and encourage students to write

Rate 5

According to what I read in the articles “ Using the internet in the ESL classroom” and “Using internet-based children’s literature to teach EFL” I can say that by applying internet resources in English second language classroom we can improve students’ writing skills by encouraging them to write very interest writings such as letters, paragraphs, essays, reviews, etc. writing might be a complicated skill for students because they do not feel motivated to write but by applying internet resources we can enhance the students’ writing. Internet resources applied to writing may be a convenient way because students have some interesting options such as publishing their writings in a classrooms’ website which may motivate students as well. Also, we there are a lot of resources that teachers could use in an English Second Language Classroom that might change students’ point of view about writing because those resources are an alternative to make the reading experience a rewarding activity. Even though internet resources may be a big help to encourage students to write, I think that web resources should not be used all the time because teachers have the ability to enrich the class’ context