Second Reflection

The American students in my class greatly benefitted from the online listening test I proposed in my previous assignment. Therefore, to make full use of technology in the class, I will apply the test to oral teaching also.

When I studied English in high school, I used a re-read machine. This device required us to read the passages in the book aloud, and perfect our accent and intonation. Repeating this process many times helped me greatly with my fluency and grasp of conversational English.

When I was in college, my professor introduced us to a program called ‘Sitman’. I found this helped me far more than the re-read machine. One can copy-paste a sentence or a passage into this program, which would then read it out for you. Additionally, one can also upload an mp3 file, and the program would allow you slow the audio down to your preference, for easier understanding.

A fellow student of mine mentioned another program that she had previously used. When she read passages on the computer screen, the colour of the word would change to indicate that she had pronounced the word incorrectly. Your grade would be based on your overall pronunciation. In order to receive the perfect score, you would have to read the passage repeatedly, until it is read without any errors. This program sounds even more useful to me.

These are just some programs that can be used for language learning, and I endeavour to make use of them in class.

First reflection

Technology can be a useful tool teaching outside the classroom.

In the Chinese class for instance, voice recording and Internet technology can go hand in hand to enhance a student’s understanding and perception of various different dialects of Mandarin that can be heard throughout China.

Students can easily find material about how to speak Mandarin on the internet;however China has a large population which is spread out across a large land area, which leads to great variance in dialects. This leads to Chinese people from different areas of the country finding it difficult to communicate with each other. Thus it is important for the student to hear all of these dialects so that they can differentiate them from one another. I will record a collection of different dialects and upload them onto Wikispaces for the purpose of learning and testing.

To understand a language the first step is to communicate with native speaker. Most classes focus on training the student to speak standard Chinese, ignoring the fact that Chinese people speak different dialects. Therefore by making use of the listening test, students are exposed to the full range of Chinese dialects and gain a richer and fuller understanding of the language, allowing them to communicate with as many Chinese speakers as possible.

Using the listening test to attract the attention of students and stimulating their interests in learning the language of communication can create a good environment in which students are exposed to a real language environment.

Question 2

Question 2

Name 5 ways that you think a teacher might need to change practice to engage digital natives?(Essay)

• Use audio or video so that students are exposed to the accent and intonation of native speakers as much as possible.
• make use of digital games to assist learning vocabulary, spelling or grammar.
• Use various different digital resources, and not stick to traditional teaching practices to engage the students fully.
• Use web pages for the class so that work easy to catch up on if missed, and can be easily accessed again for the purposes of revision.
• Use Skype or other chat program to call and speak to natives and have a full conversation in the language. 

Question 1

Question 1:

Do you think that there is really a different between digital natives and digital immigrants? If so, how must teaching change?

I believe that there is a difference between digital natives and digital immigrants. Although there are exceptions to this rule, in general people from more recent generations have a greater affinity with technology, as they have grown up using these tools. This is why often there is conflict between generations in the household when children use the internet or gaming consoles.

If there is a class in which there is  great variance in age groups, it would be better to offer a greater spectrum of teaching techniques to ensure maximum benefit to all students. Perhaps the actual teaching in class would not need to change to great extent, as even now there is not too great a dependence to technology which is being used in the classroom. In this way the teaching of both sets of students would  reach full effectiveness.