Systematized Classroom English?

After having talked with my friend about concrete techniques for English classrooms in Japan, I came up an idea that it must be helpful for both EFL/ESL learners (especially for EFL) to create systematic vocabulary and phrase lists for classroom-English.

In Japan, the most realistic goal of English education is to achieve a high score in tests, especially for high school, college or university entrance exams. The ministry of Education, Culture, Sports Science & Technology in Japan (文部科学省) have issued a new version of the Course of Study (Nation wide syllabus for schools), and in it, they mentioned that one of the final goals of Japan's English education is to achieve a communication competence, but still, how to measure the skill mostly relies on the tests which have basically not changed over years.
So, how can we achieve the goal without making the class an examination-preparation style?
This is hard. This is hard especially in Japan, because we have developed an exam-prep teaching style and it has been successfully surviving over decades.

Well, here comes my friend's idea, "creating a systematic words-and-phrases lists for classroom English". By "classroom English", he means English which the teachers use in front of their students.
Why did he call it "systematic"? It's because the lists are to be created from vocabulary/phrase corpora or some forms of stocks (i.e. Books) which are created based on the vocabulary/phrases for specific tests.
For example, we can create a list based on Eiken (Japan's government-authorized English test), TOEIC, TOEFL , or school entrance exams. If teachers use English in classrooms based on these lists, students will be able to get more input which is their priority.
His idea, I think, is based on the learner's LAD (Language Acquisition Device), in which input becomes intake by noticing, and the intake creates L2 knowledge. The more systematized set of vocabulary/phrases students are provided with, the more likely they are able to learn the input as their L2 knowledge.

I think this is a realistic idea, and I agree with this.
One thing I would like to add to my friend's idea is that the data from which lists will be created can be extracted from words and phrases, what we call, "for communicative use".
Is it difficult to choose communicative words/phrases? Is there hardships which destroy the hoped usefulness of classroom English?

Anyway, I'm happy that you took a look at my post :)
Thank you:)

Keep loving what you're doing.

Elizabeth Gilbert, a respectable writer, had a presentation in TED which is inspiring and encouraging for all of us despite what we do.

Her message is that we have to love our job, be stubborn about it, and believe that we will someday achieve an extraordinary, terrific consequence.

Extensive and intensive learning?

Imagine that you are a student who studies the theories and methods of teaching English as either second or foreign language, and one of your friends asks you an advise on how to study English because he/she is going to take English test such as TOEFL or TOEIC. How would you advise?

In fact, this is the case which happens to me sometimes, as I'm enjoying my campus life in Japan. When we are asked this kind of question by our friend, we're likely to observe the friend's English level and think what ability is needed for the test which he/she is taking, and give best appropriate answer we have come up with at that moment: this is the process that I do when I'm asked. Let's back to the answer of the question. Is there one best way to learn English for all the learners, for all levels? The answer is, unfortunately, no. Good ways to learn English depend on the learner's every single factor, age, first language, character, goals, skills and so forth. So, we take as many factors as possible into consideration, sometimes guess the missing factors, and extract a possible good way to achieve the goal. And after you answered the question, you get surprised at the time and energy you spent to get that answer, and wonder if there is a manual for advising language learners.

Well, I will not try my best to make a manual, spending all the summer break left over, but I would like to suggest today a useful aspect of learning when you are engaged in foreign language learning. That is extensive and intensive learning.

Extensive and intensive learning is not something totally new for the field of language learning (or, I would say English learning in this blog). This has already been introduced in reading field. While in extensive reading, the learners read a lot of books whose levels are slightly under their English levels, without looking up unknown words, while in intensive reading, they read books whose levels are the same or bit higher than their levels, with looking up each unknown words and pay great attention to the sentence structure. The quantity matters in extensive reading, and quality matters in intensive reading.

Having learned this idea, extensive and intensive reading, I have thought if it can be applied to other language skills, listening, writing, and speaking. And it seems that the idea works well on these three skills as well as on reading. When a learner practice writing, they can do both extensive writing and intensive writing, and so as in other skills. The important idea here, is that in the extensive learning, quantity matters, and in the intensive learning, quality matters. The purpose of the extensive learning is to get much experience of and get used to doing the task, and get knowledge from that experience, as the learner is exposed to a good amount of input. The purpose of the intensive learning is to consider and analyze the information from the task as much as possible, and get deeper insight of the target language. These two are not standing by itself independently, however. These two have to be balanced in order to get the most of the learning.

The extensive and the intensive learning is not something which can answer the previous question "what's the best way to learn English". It does, however, have potential to be one effective way to learn English, and I hope this idea will help learners who want to improve their language skills.

After seeing my friends off

Most of my friends who came to Japan an exchange students have already left Japan, going back to their own country. And, I feel 一期一会 (Japanese word which means preciousness of meeting people) for each of them.

It was almost one year ago when I left Japan and took the first step on Chicago as an exchange student. At that time, I didn't know what would happen in Chicago, much less things which would happen after I came back to Japan.

Now, after finishing the 9 months study in UIC and 3 months after I come back to Japan, I strongly feel that English is a great tool for international communication.

When I was in America, of course, I spoke English, and felt that English is a magical language since I was able to communicate with people from many different countries such as French, Germans, Finish, Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Mexicans, and of course, Americans. It was not very surprising, because it was in America, but I was still impressed by the variety of people.
After coming back to Japan and started talking with many international students, I found that English is useful not only English speaking countries, but also other countries. Of course, the international students can speak Japanese, but it is easier to speak with English with some of them.


Anyways, have safe trips, my friends.
I'm very happy to have met you all.
See you when I see you :)





From the top of Mt. Fuji (Japan)
2010.8.13

Today

Just changed the design of this blog :)

Also, took some pictures. See my blog
http://tall-chai-latte-please.tumblr.com/

Presentation "What is Linguistics"

Yesterday, in an international meeting, I had a presentation on linguistics. The title is "Introduction to Linguistics."
Since the purpose of the meeting is to share each student's major field, I created an easy overview of linguistics.

Actually, my major is not linguistics (it is ESL), so there might be some mistakes, but it is I have learned so far as linguistics.




Here's the script of my presentation.



~First Slide~

Today, I'm going to introduce the very basics of linguistics. I think many of you might not have studied linguistics, so I would like to start with a very easy but important question. What is a linguistics?


~Second Slide~

What is your image of linguistics? Maybe some of you imagine a lot of old people when you hear linguistics.


~Third Slide~

And, you may think that those old people have studied linguistics. Well, that's true. Linguistics is a very old study. But if you think that linguistics is very hard to study, boring, and maybe a dead area, it is totally wrong. Linguistics is not hard to study. It is actually easy, and it is very interesting, and, it is alive. It is not dead at all. So, the purpose of this presentation is to have an easy overview of linguistics.

Linguistics is a study of language. We study and research over language. Well, here, I would like to ask one question. What is language? What is language in linguistics?
It is, a symbol.


~Fourth Slide~

Well, what do I mean by symbol? Look at the picture in the next slide.


~Fifth Slide~
What do you call this?
Of course, in English, it is called "sky". In Japanese, it's "sora". And in Chinese, it's "tiengkong(?)", and in Spanish, it's "cielo", and in Korean, it's "hanel(?)".

As you can see, each language has different writing system, and even though some of them have the same writing system, they have different symbol to show the meaning. Of course, sound system is different in each language. In order to show the meaning, each language has its own symbol. In linguistics, we decode and study the symbols in each language.

To overview the symbols, let's start with sound system.


~Sixth Slide~
In linguistics, there are two areas where we study sounds. One is called phonetics, and the other is called phonology.

Phonetics is a study of each sound in each language. For example, in English, we have /l/ sound and /r/ sound, but in Japanese, we don't have these sounds. Instead, we have /ɹ/ sound as a counterpart of either /l/ or /r/ in English. In phonetics, we study how to produce (pronounce) each sound in each language.

Phonology is a study of sound system. In each language, there are some rules to form sounds. For example, in Japanese, we of course have /n/ sound, but it never occurs at the beginning of a word. Similarly, in Spanish, there is a rule that /sp/ sound cannot occur at the beginning of a word. So, in Spanish, we don't say "spaghetti", but we say "espagueti". Phonology is a study of the rules of sounds in each language.

Next area is about words.


~Seventh Slide~

There are also two areas of words study in linguistics. One is morphology, and the other is semantics. Actually, semantics is a study of meaning, not only words, but here, I would like to focus on word meaning.

Morphology is a study of word structure. Please look at some words here. Language, bilingual, linguistics, somehow these words all look similar. But how? Well, it's because of these parts; "ling/lang" parts. These parts are both related to language, so we find similarity in these three words. In morphology, we break down each word and study the structure of them; we study how words are structured.

In semantics, we study the meaning of each word; how they get meanings. The meaning of "ling/lang" part in the previous example is also a part of semantics.

We come so far, from sounds to words, and now, we are going to see sentences.


~Eighth Slide~

The same as the two symbols: sounds and words, there are also two areas in study of sentences. One is called syntax, and the other one is semantics again.

Syntax is a study of sentence structure. Let me give you an example.
"Tom saw a man with a telescope."
This sentence is grammatically perfect. It's a perfect English. However, there is an ambiguity in this sentence. From this sentence, we cannot say if Tom used a telescope to see the man or he saw a man having a telescope. In syntax, we break down each sentence and find the structure of it. In other words, we try to find rules of structuring a sentence.

Semantics in this part, is a study of sentence meaning. Let me give you another example.
"Do you have a pen?"
This sentence is also grammatically perfect, and it seems that it does not have any ambiguity in it. But let's think with two situations. When you go to primary school, and your teacher asks you "Do you have your bag? Do you have your lunchbox? Do you have your pen?" In this situation, "Do you have a pen?" means "Do you have a pen or not?". It's very simple. You will simply answer yes or no.
Let me give you another situation. Now you're in a classroom, and today is an exam day. It starts in 1 minute. You looked into your pen case, and found that you don't have a pen. You ask the person who is sitting next to you "Do you have a pen?" How will he answer? You'll get mad if he answers "Yes, I have mine. Thanks for confirming." In this case, "Do you have a pen" means, "Can I borrow your pen?"
Sentences change meaning according to the situation. In semantics, especially in pragmatics, we study the meaning of each sentence.

*I thought pragmatics is a part of semantics, but after the presentation, I got a feed back that semantics and pragmatics are different areas. Pragmatics is a study of the sentence meaning according to the situation, while semantics is a study of the sentence meaning without situation.


~Ninth Slide~

So far, we have looked over linguistics. We have phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. These are the basic areas in linguistics, but there are also some areas which are related to linguistics. Let me go over these areas a little bit.

In sociolinguistics we study how languages associate with our society. Over time, our language has been changed with influenced with other languages. Even in one language, one dialect has influenced by other dialects and changed. Study of this change is a part of sociolinguistics.

In psycholinguistics, we study the relationship between our language and our mind. How do we feel when we speak a language, and how it is different from the feeling we have when we speak in another language. This is a part of psycholinguistics field.

And, we also study language acquisition. Actually, this is my major. My major is ESL or EFL, English as a Second Language or English as a Foreign Language, and in that, we study how we learn or acquire our second or foreign language. And, t is closely related to linguistics.

There are some more areas which are related to linguistics, but I didn't include them because I haven't learned them yet.

So, this is a quick and easy over view of linguistics. I hope you all get a better image on linguistics. Thank you.

Why English?

10 to 12-year-old elementary school students will be taught English in their class in Japan. From 2011, English is going to be a required subject in every school.

Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology （文部科学省） insists that this early-started-teaching will lessen the students’ fears against English. The focus of the English class is put on communication. “Children in schools will enjoy English lessons, and it will make them more interested in English” an elementary teacher who teaches English in his class says. What the students do in class is sing songs, play games, and learn easy greeting expressions in English. It sounds fun, but does this really work?

You may feel strange when you know the fact that the annual course syllabus in junior high and high schools won’t be affected by this change. What is taught in those schools is “examination English”, cramming grammar and vocabulary to pass the exams for high school or college. Students are not always motivated to learn English for this purpose. So, why do they need to “enjoy” English in schools?

.

I would say that many English teachers in Japan do not care why their students have to study English. I can hear answers like “Of course because it’s required!” Oh, come on! Some may say “leaning another language is good for our life.” OK. I would agree with it. But why English?

There are actually many voices that if you can use English, you will have better life. Well, it might be true. English is now the strongest language in many fields in the world; business, engineering, science and so on. If you know how to use (“use” means either read, write, listen or speak) English, you will have more chance to get job. However, many people in Japan choose not to study English hard, hard enough to use it for their career. As I feel from what they say, I think they just don’t like to make effort to study English enough. There are many kinds of jobs you can get without ability of English, and there are not many jobs where people who can use English are hired more than who haven’t learned it enough. The belief that English makes our life better is an unproved belief spread in Japan.

If you wanna be an English teacher, you have to be prepared to answer one of your students’ question: “Why do I study English?” You can’t say “coz it’s required”, can you? Or would you answer “because it enriches your life” ?

.

People who wanna be English teachers, or who are English teachers must have reasons why they’ve chosen English. Had fun time with American friends? Had a good trip in Australia? Or they think cross cultural communication is really interesting? Anything can be a reason. Anything.

My point is that if you wanna be an English teacher, you should be confident with your own reason; confident enough to tell students your own story and attract them.

What English teacher do is to make students like English. It’s not just teaching grammar, vocabulary, how to read, write, listen, nor speak.

Never forget the reason you’ve chosen English. Never forget why you think English is attractive.

It’s you, English teachers, who can answer your own students’ question, “Why do I study English?”

Blog post (4/15): Computer Mediated Collaborative Learning

According to Warschauer (1997), there are five features that distinguish Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) from other communication media:
1. text-based and computer-mediated interaction
2. many-to-many communication
3. time-and place-independence
4. long distance exchanges
5. hypermedia links

Considering these features, CMC has a lot of benefits. First, in text-based interaction, such as online chatting, learners can practice rapid interaction with opportunities for reflection, and many of them can be more expressive. Also, it can mediate writing to speaking in that learners can experience real conversation through writing. Second, CMC is free from time and place; it means that learners can have more time to reflect (in cases such as sending emails), and they can access to it as long as they have internet capability and computer accessibility. Third, learners can interact with people form any countries around the world, which broadens their possibility to learn the language. Finally, they can share links of materials with other learners so that they can easily look through it and reflect, and discuss it.
These are the potentials and realities of CMC, but some questions are remained, such as what is the new roll of teachers in CMC environment, or how to deal with ethnic, linguistic or cultural difference between the learners.
Although questions are still remained, it can be said that CMC is starting to change the way of collaborative learning. A well designed CMC will help learners learn from the new technology.

Above is the summary of the article, and as I read this, I came up a question which post a different view on the role of CMC in language learning.
Question is: is CMC (in writing) really helps learners enhance communication ability? Not only this article, but also other articles about CMC suggest that through CMC, learners tend to express their thoughts more than face-to-face communication, and they can have more time to reflect on what others say and what their responses are. As an opportunityu to practice their target language, CMC will work good with these points. I doubt, however, if it works as an opportunity to enhance communication ability, since in face-to-face communication, they don't have time to reflect or cannot have excuse to express their thoughts less. Of course, CMC will work good to enforce learners' ability, with providing chances for practice, but I don't think CMC (in writing) itself works to enhance their communication ability.

Mark Warschauer, 1997, Computer-Mediated Collaborative Learning: Theory and Practice

Blog post (3/18 #2). Using wikis as CALL material?

It seems that using wikis is one of the possibilities for a CALL material these days. One merit of using wikis is that students can collaborate in their work anytime, and anywhere. This is a strong point which other CALL materials does not seem to have, especially in terms of writing (we can say that voicethread can be a counterpart in speaking field). It sounds like an attractive material, but we still have to be careful how we use it in language classes. One of our reading shows that the engineering students did not feel comfortable with using wikis for their class. The reasons the researcher gave why it did not work good were: the students were not familiar using wikis; they needed to have extra work besides wiki writing; engineering majors may have a negative attitude towards collaborative writing tasks. This study shows that wikis are not almighty. However, if we use it in an appropriate way, it will work good for language acquisition. To use it appropriately, we first need to know the merits of using wikis. As I wrote at the beginning, one, and maybe the biggest merit is that students can collaborate in their work. So, wikis will be most appropriate when it is used for group works (in the research, it was not used for a well designed group work, and I think that is a reason why the students felt uncomfortable with wikis). Also, easy accessibility is another merit for wikis. In my opinion, I think it will be better to assign simple tasks for wiki tasks, not very complicated and hard tasks. This is because if the tasks are very hard, learners may feel reluctant to access wikis, which will spoil one of its merits.

Blogpost (3/18): Text-based chat? Face-to-face conversatioon?

The reading of this week "Noticeing and text-based chat" argues the possibilities of the effect of Computer-Mediated Communication (chatting) on Noticing. This article concludes that text-based chatting elicits learners' attention on what they typed on the chat, which is a necessary factor for second language acquisition according to the Noticing Hypothesis. Although I agree with the point that text-based chat can work good for noticing, I doubt if it really works for SLA. The reading shows that learners' self error correction occurs more in text-based chatting than face-to-face conversation, it does not show that this error corrections enhanced their language acquisition. Also, the article does not mention the negative aspect of the frequent error correction: it can interrupt the fluency of the communication. The data shows that the face-to-face conversation has less self correction than text-based chat, it does not mean that it is less efficient for SLA. I think that the face-to-face conversation does good for learners fluency (while text-based chat does good to their accuracy). Ann E. Chun et al's study (1982) shows that in native-nonnative conversations, native speakers correct nonnative speakers' errors in terms of vocabulary, not too frequently to keep the fluency of conversation. This projects another point of view on the article in that error correction from the face-to-face interlocutor can work good on SLA.

My question is that how Computer-Mediated Communication (text-based chat) should be used to enhance the learner's acquisition. Should it be used to improve their accuracy? Or should it be used for their fluency improvement?
My current answer is that since chatting is casual, not very academic, it will work better when the purpose is set on the improvement of the learner's fluency, not accuracy.
What do you think?

Reference:
Ann E. Chun, Richard R. Day, N. Ann Chenoweth, Stuart Luppescu (1982) "Errors, Interaction, and Correction: A Study of Native-Nonnative Conversations" TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 16, No. 4 December 1982.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3586471

Final Project Proposal

I would like to create a CALL activity which helps learners with connecting their listening to speaking, especially conversation. The CALL tools I will be using are listening website which provides real conversation-based listening, and discussion space where learners can chat not only with each other, but also with native English speakers in other countries.

elllo (http://www.elllo.org/english/0951/T999B-Todd-elllo.htm)
ESL listening lab (http://www.esl-lab.com/)
Nicenet (http://www.nicenet.org/)
The first two will be used for listening activity, and the third will be used for discussion about the listening.

The intended audience of this activity is intermediate to advanced level English learners who are interested in improving their conversation ability. The purpose of this activity is to connect what they learned from the listening to communication. In the class, learners first listen to the story from the website, and then do some listening exercises. At the same time, learners are encouraged to pick up words or expressions that they think will be helpful for English conversation. Each listening websites are designed based on real conversation, so learners will find many useful expressions. After the listening, discussion about the listening will be set on the Nicenet, and learners are guided to chat on it, using the expressions that they have learned from the listening. Also, native English speakers from other countries will be asked to join the discussion, so that learners will be able to communicate with them. The topics will be related to learners’ real life, so that they can make comments easily. This CALL lesson will enhance language acquisition, especially for convey meaning in conversation, since it provides many chances for both input and output conversational expressons in appropriate context.

I might also use this website to create chat space.

http://home.kanto-gakuin.ac.jp/~taoka/lecs/

Blogpost (3/11): Podcast Project 3

University Life in America 2

This podcast is for intermediate level English Learners. Click the title above, and you'll find the podcast.
Have a quick look at direction 1, and start playing.


~~

Direction 1
Before you listen, read the exercise 1, and try to get answer for each question from the listening.


Exercise 1:
1. What is Nacho's major?
2. What are the two main topics of the interview?



Direction 2
Listen to the interview again. This time, pay attention to the words below and try to figure out the meanings.

・military
・affect
・conflict
・strategy
・tactics


Exercise 2: Give the definitions to each word provided above. Answers are at the bottom of this page.



Direction 3
Read the exercise 3, and try to catch the answers from the listening.


Exercise 3: Answer the questions below. Choose the best answer if choices are given. Correct answers are at the bottom of this page.

1. In his class, what are some specific features tried to be understood from wars and conflicts?

2. What kind of job does he mention where military knowledge can be applied? Choose all the correct answers.
a. political career
b. solder in Air Force
c. FBI
d. business person

3. In his view, what is important to know for future jobs?



~~
Answers for the exercises
Exercise 1.
1. Military History
2. What he learns in his class, and how he will apply the knowledge to the real life the two topics.


Exercise 2. (click each word to see more definitions)
・military: related to members of the armed force
・affect: to produce an effect or change in something
・conflict: (noun) often prolonged fighting
・strategy: the science and art of using all the forces of a nation to execute approved plans as effectively as possible during war
・tactics: the art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle

Exercise 3.
1. How would wars affect the future, and how the nations came to be what it is to be, and what impact wars and conflicts have on people.
2. a, c
3. What kind of strategy/tactics you can use, and how can we prevent mistakes that were done before. Also, he mentioned about the importance of applying what was learned to the future world.


podbean page: http://kazkuma.podbean.com/

Podcast Project 2

University Life in America 1


This is a podcast for English listening practice designed for beginning to intermediate level learners.
Click the title above, and you'll find the podcast.
Start playing the audio, with following the directions below.

~~

Direction 1
Listen to the interview, and try to figure out what is talked about. After the interview, go on to the exercise 1.

Exercise 1: Answer the questions about what is talked about. Answers are at the bottom of this page.

1. How many years do students usually spend in a university?
2. What is Paul's major?
3. What does Paul do during the summer break?



Direction 2
Listen to the interview again. This time, pay attention to the words below and guess the meanings.

・semester
・college
・commute
・break

Exercise 2: Explain the meaning of the words in this interview. Answers are at the bottom of this page.



Direction 3
Listen to the interview again. This time, try to catch more details of the interview.

Exercise 3: Answer the questions below. Choose the best answer if choices are given. Correct answers are at the bottom of this page.

1. When does each semester starts?

2. What subject did Paul mention for general required classes? Choose all the right answers.
a. Math
b. Architecture
c. Art
d. Science

3. How did Paul go to UIC when he was a junior student?

4. What does he want to do with his money?


Post Listening Activity
Think about how university students in your country spend their time. Are there any differences between your country and America? What are the differences? Talk about it with others, and share your thoughts.




~~
Answers for the exercises
Exercise 1.
1. Four years
2. Film (Moving Image)
3. He works

Exercise 2. (click each word to see more definitions)
・semester: a division constituting half of the regular academic year
・college: an undergraduate division or school of a university offering courses in a particular field.
・commute: (verb) to travel regularly over some distance
・break: (noun) a pause or an interval

Exercise 3.
1. From the end of August, and from January.
2. a, b
3. He drove a car to the UIC.
4. To buy ticket to go to Japan.


podbean page: http://kazkuma.podbean.com/

Podcast Project 1

Podcast: Everyday life in the US.

~Instruction~

This podcast is designed for English learners of intermediate level. The episode is about making an appointment for physical checkup.

Click the title above, and you will find our podcast.

Before you start listening to it, try to do the Pre-Listeining Task below.

~Pre-Listening Activity~

Choose the better definition for each words. The answer is at the end of this task.

clinic

1. a place or a hospital department where patients are given treatment or advice

2. a place where children or teenagers are taught

dental

1. relating or belonging to the teeth

2. a building where goods are manufactured

schedule an appointment

1. a published work of literature

2. arrange to meet somebody

check up

1. feeling or showing pleasure

2. to cary out detailed examination

medical

1. treatment given by doctors

2. used in education or by teachers

health insurance

1. financial protection for customers

2. medical expenses covered by employer

.. .. .. .. ..

Answer: [1 1 2 2 1 2]

.. .. .. .. ..

Now, let's listen to the podcast.

(Further tasks are listed below)

~Vocabulary~

Click each vocabulary to see the meaning.

clinic

schedule an appointment (schedule: verb)

check up

medical

dental

health insurance

copay

~Post-Listening Activity 1~

After you've listened to the podcast, take a look at the following sentences. You will notice that the sentences are put randomly. Please put them in order according to the episode you heard. The answer is at the end of this task.

A. The clinic appointment scheduler tells Mr. Kuma that they have a japanese Doctor on staff.

B. The clinic appointment scheduler asks Mr. Kuma to wait while she connects him to the medical department where he can schedule his appointment.

C. The clinic receptionist asks Mr. Kuma to state the purpose of his call.

D. The clinic appointment scheduler would like to know if Mr. Kuma has health insurance coverage.

E. The clinic scheduler tells Mr. Kuma when there is an opening in their calendar to schedule a checkup visit.

F. The clinic scheduler reminds Mr. kuma to bring his UIC ID and his copay to his physical checkup.

.. .. ..

[C B E D F A]

.. .. ..

~Post-Listening Activity 2~

Take a look at the questions below. Spend a couple of minutes brainstorming, and talk about the each question with your group.

1. There are many kinds of clinics, depending on their purpose. Name the kinds and purpose of a visit there.

(Ex. Dental: when you have to get your teeth cleaned, or have a tooth decay)

2. Imagine that you need to make a phone call to a hospital. What information will you prepare before you call? (Ex. your name)

3. Think about the hospital in your own country. How are they different from those in the US or other countries? Introduce the hospital system and admitting procedures in your own country to your group members, and discover the differences among other countries' systems.

Coworkers: Lisa, and Miglena.

Blogpost 2: Voicethread?

Using voicethread makes learners use their target language outside the classroom, in terms of listening and speaking. It is a new CALL speaking material, since students can have conversation on line, not just practicing pronunciation which has been the main purpose of many other CALL speaking websites. The second website shows us that voicethread makes more students participate in the task, which is less possible in class. It also shows that students feel less scary about speaking out because they can spend some time preparing what they will say before they make the thread. I would say voicethread is a good material for speaking, especially for communication.

However, I have a questions about voicethread: what is the purpose of using voicethread? It is clear that the main purpose of using voicethread is not to improve students' pronunciation accuracy. Since it is open to everybody, it is more important that more students post their threads and communicate through it, without caring too much about the accuracy. However, communicating on website is very different from communication in the real world. In many cases, we don't have much time to think what we say before we open our mouth and speak. Also, conversation floats in real life, so we cannot listen to the whole conversation again, even if we have problems understanding the topic.

Considering these things, I would say voicethread will work good with the purpose of reducing fears for making a speech and of practicing the basics of conversation (listen and answer) before students are exposed to real opportunities to use the target language. (It should be used more for speech fluency at first, and then speech accuracy at the next level.)

YouTube video for ESL study

I think this series of videos is very helpful for learners of English.

First of all, this website has many categories of videos, such as grammar, pronunciation, expressions for special topics, and even slangs. Also, in each category, they mention about nuance of English, more than simple explanations of grammar or usage, which I think are very important when we learn a language.

Although some of the dialogues are unnatural, they provide authentic English in general. So, as long as learners want to learn English for the purpose of use English, I think this website is very beneficial for them.

This is more for intermediate to advanced level learners of ESL.

http://www.youtube.com/user/JenniferESL

Vocabulary Study

After I searched some vocabulary website, I concluded that vocabulary.com will be the most effective website for students' indivisual vocabulary leaning.

This website has mainly four parts for vocabulary enrichment: Root Word lesson part, Thematic puzzles part, Word list, and Test part. The part I like the most is the Root Word lesson part where students can get ideas of meanings of many affixes and roots. Using affixes and roots as a clue is an efficient way to learn vocabulary. Since other websites I searched do not have categories for roots or affix, I like this website the best.
In the thematic puzzles part, students can learn words which are categorized based on their theme, so if students want to learn many words in a specific topic, it will be useful. The problem this part has is that they do not have level category, so it may be inconvenient for students who want to build up certain level of vocabulary, not theme-categorized vocabulary.

The word list part does not have any quiz, so it may be very boring if students want to learn vocabulary form this list, but it'll be a good review list for learnt vocabulary. And in the test part, students can have various kinds of tests that will help them check the vocabulary they've learned.

Although this website does not have passages to see in which context each word is used, it will be an effective source to build vocabulary, especially for students' own independent study.

http://www.vocabulary.com/

CALL Reading Source #2

For CALL reading, I think a University Homepage can be a good material.
First, the teacher tell students what kind of information they are expected to get on the Internet. Then, they search on the Internet and find the page that has the information, read, and get the proper information.
At the beginning, the webpage should be designated so that students do not spend most of their time finding the proper page. Then, instruction to find the page gradually lessen, so that students can finally find the information by themselves.

I think this reading study provides not just an authentic materials, but also real life situation. Students can improve both their reading skills and skills of getting proper information.

I guess this is for high-intermediate students.


Example: find UIC OIS page for international orientation and find what you need to prepare for it.
http://www.ois.uic.edu/students/new/orientation/

CALL Reading Source #1

I chose "Breaking News English" as a material for CALL reading. Each article has Warm-up, Before-Reading task, While-Reading task, and Post-Reading task, which are all well constructed for classroom activity. I think this material can be used for either prep homework or in-class material, since it has a lot of tasks for classroom discution.

First, students collect the background information of the topic through the Before-Reading task. Then, they read the article for the first time, and get the idea of the article. The reading should be repeated if necessary. After reading, they do the While-Reading task, and read the article again to check the answer. (The listening task will follow this task) Finally, they do the Post-Reading task and prepare for class discussion.

If the students are motivated to get wide knowledge about the world, this material will be a very good material because, through each tasks, we need to search and get general background information about the article. However, some students may feel that these tasks are hard for them or less meaningful for their English study, so teacher should be careful of those students when using this kind of material.
Each articles has mp3, so it can also be used for listening. I think it will work better when used for both reading and listening lessons.

I think this is for advanced learners.
http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/index.html

My Previous CALL experience (listening)

I took a CALL English class in my home country 2 years ago.
It was especially for listening, and it was called 'Three Round CALL system". As the name tells us, there are three rounds in the system.

In the first round, we watch a video (news, interviews, etc.) and catch what is talked in it. We first watch the whole video, and then we watch it again, with the video being cut into some parts. After that, we learn vocabulary and expressions used in it, and get general knowledge about the topic.

In the second round, we watch the video again, and catch the details of the topic. We watch it with small parts, too. After that, we review the vocabulary and expressions, and have small quiz about the topic.

In the last round, we watch the whole video and try to catch more details. Finally we have a quiz and measre how deeply we understand the video.

For many of us, this system worked effectively to improve our listening skills, and most of them liked the system.


Qestion: Can CALL be effective for all the four skills: reading, listening, writing, and speaking? (I'm wondering if CALL can be more effective than other materials, especially in reading and writing.)