Week 3 Experiences

Week 3: Skill-building Websites for Oral/Aural Skills and Saving Bookmarks with Delicious

October 21-27 

-We were asked to do the following tasks for week 3

• Discussion - Aural/Oral Skill-Building Websites

 reading one article on listening-speaking website, and reviewing at least two different speaking, listening, and/or pronunciation web sites 

• Task - Using Delicious.com to Store Useful Links  

• Project Task 2 - read and analyze one sample project , post on Nicenet 

• Blog -  share reflections on what  learned this week related to aural/oral skill-building and Delicious and comment on another person's post 

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Using Delicious.com

•  I started my task creating a delicious page first because I was in search of such a page where I wanted my bookmarks saved for future use. Before this training I used to store my web pages in a file ( word document) in my dropbox tool that cannot be accessible from anywhere. It was inconvenient but when I arrived in the third week, I have created and started using my delicious page. Now I can store my personal as well as academic bookmark pages.This is a new achievement for me. I liked this technology very much and thanked our training designer and instructor.

My delicious page URL is :
https://delicious.com/tsubedi123

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Aural/Oral Skill-Building

•  The second task given to us for mid week 3, I studied the article entitled "New Perspectives in Teaching Pronunciation " by Maria Grazia Busa about "Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)" and knew about CALL is very useful for both language teachers and learners. Learners have individualized environments where learners learn at their own pace making autonomous decisions. I studied and posted my comment  on Nicenet.
•  Next task was to view  the article "Developing Listening Skills with Authentic Materials" by Lindsay Miller .
  After reading this article I knew that listening skill in language teaching is given less preference in terms that there is not much research about it. Most of the teachers and the researchers are not giving priority in listening skill .I agree that listening skill is the first skill and needed to develop properly. there is no learning without listening. I would like to point my reflections about this article.
  Teaching listening is very useful using technology tools radio, TV, video, Internet, CD Rom. The idea of teaching listening in different three stages pre- listening, while listening and post listening.

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Read and analyze one sample project , post on Nicenet  

According to the assignment given to us for project task 2 , I read the project below:

Volume 1, Number 4, Summer 2010, E-Teacher Projects Gallery

Course: Building Teaching Skills Through the Interactive Web, University of Oregon

Author: Prem Bahadur Phyak, Department of English Education, University Campus

Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

• This project was conducted to the post graduate students who are going to write a thesis as a part of their course of Master's degree in the Tribhuwan University of Nepal. The author was the supervisor of a group of 20 students and intended research to use technology in an uncomfortable environment i.e. with limited internet access and lack of other technology tools. The setting of the project is in the Tribhuwan university Department of English Education to conduct an action research to cope with the problem of the thesis students to communicate with their supervisor using e mail and internet in such condition without sufficient project journals to study and facilities of library aiming students develop their academic writing and research skills.
• After reading this project, I collected idea about how to write such projects.We have to prepare a final project in this training.This is an action research in which the author looked for the convenient ways to communicate with his students.Most of  the students were unknown about e learning , and the author encouraged them to use e mail and internet . The situation was challenging in terms of electricity, internet access, and availability of sample journals. Later, often empty minded students were filled with some idea about academic writing through the use of technology tools.

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In summary, I learned in this week

a.       create and use delicious page , social bookmarking page , where any web page links can be saved and used according to own needs. we need to make ID and Password to use the page.

b.      Computer Assisted Language Learning ( CALL ) is important in learning English language since there are software and other tools such as listening speaking tools, recording and playing system related to production of sounds more accurately.

c.       Learned that listening is the most important skills but the researchers and teachers don't give much attention to this skill. The better listening, the better learning.

d.      learned to write  the project report i.e. action research using the universal format .

e.      learned to explore hundreds of educational and learning websites and use them as my needs for different purposes . 

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