Top Ten Poetic Devices

A very interesting and useful video. British Council has run some courses for teaching poems and songs. Below is a video about top ten poetic devices. You can play it to your students as a lead-in activity.

Some online videos for social issues

As the introduction of NSS curriculum, students are required to take elective courses. For my school, they need to do learning English through social issues. Teachers nowadays may use newspaper to develop students' knowledge to the world. However, to boost their interest and strengthen their memory, teachers may use different teaching aids in order to give students more stimuli. Using videos, for example, is quite effective and interesting way to teach current news. Other than words, students can refer to sounds, gestures, facial expressions, etc. to get the gist of the news.

Go to the following website offered by RTHK and you can find lots of useful resources for teaching students social issues.

http://www.rthk.org.hk/index_eng.htm

Week 4 Reflection

Many research studies have shown that people behave so differently online. They react positively in a virtual world. For instance, they show fewer inhibition, display less social anxiety, and reduce their public self-awareness. In view of the advantages brought about by online communication, Roed (2003) conducted a pilot project, trying to explore the communicative behaviour patterns of first and second year tertiary students. 13 university students were given a communicative language task to do. They were sitting in the same room and each was given an identity. They needed to ask and answer each other questions so that they could find out the identity of other subjects. They were told to ask simple and elementary questions in order to keep the linguistic level simple so that all subjects could participate in the interview.

The researcher found that there are some advantages of using text communication. First, communication will not be affected by speakers of different accents. Also, there is no time pressure nor is there any interruption. Both help to reduce learners' anxiety. In other words, even passive students are more willing to communicate.

To me, I agree with the researchers. A teacher in Hong Kong may need to take care of more than 40 students in a class. Students have different characters. Some are shy and introverted. Some are very extroverted and talkative. Using text communication can suit learners with different traits. If we aim at training students writing skills. Text communication may help. If we want to train students speaking skills, I would say online communication may also be beneficial. For example, if we do not require students to have face to face interaction, their social anxiety may decrease. So, online communication does have a role to play in language teaching.

Reflection on Week 3 Reading

Warschauer, M., Shetzer, H., & Meloni, C. F. (2000) has written an article about Internet for English teaching. They, first of all, remind teachers the learning goals we have bear in mind when incorporating Internet in teaching. Notions like, active and creative mastery, autonomous learning, critical thinking, etc, are mentioned in their article. I think the gist here is to let teachers know they shouldn't be the slave of e-learning. They need to teach students to have a critical mind and equip them skills to select materials to learn.
They also include teaching guidelines which give teachers more information about how to integrate e-learning in the lessons. For example, teachers can introduce project-based learning and students-centred learning. One of the objectives is to get rid of spoon-feeding students.
Many English teachers, like me, may find using Internet in the lessons difficult since we may come up with so many technical problems. However, as long as we know how to seek help and be prepared for each lesson, using Internet in English lessons is beneficial to both students and teachers (at least, you can have a sense of achievement in the lesson!)