Week3: How technology could be helpful in improving students' aural/oral skills

It is the end of this week again. I have just finished posting on Nicenet this morning. It is just the third week of participating online E-Teacher course and I have been gaining lot of knowledge from this course. I have learned new and interesting things of teaching language. Thery are really useful to apply to my classroom. I am really excited when the school opens again in May and I have many useful tools of using technology in classroom and also the websites to share with my colleagues at the school.

I am so glad to meet Delicious.com this week. Yes, It is new for me and it is such a wonderful site that Deborah suggested us to save our favorite bookmarks. I don't have any problem with my favorite sites anymore. Delicious.com helps me to find it easily. I learned how to create Delicious and save my favorite websites on there. Just go to www.delicious.com and create your own and bookmark the sites you like. Here is mine http://delicious.com/gkainoonsingha I faced problems during creating it but it was not so difficult to do. After finishing it I put lot of useful bookmarks there but I don't understand much to do with the tag. Yes, I am now so happy how convenient it is. It provides us bookmarks everywhere we go or when you use other's computer.

How technology could be helpful in improving students' aural/oral skills

Dennie Hoopingarner (2009) and Lindsay Miller (2003) mention how useful of using technology into language classroom. "Best Practices in Technology and Language Teaching", Hoopingarner's paper illustrates how technology promote language learning all four skill listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. Lindsay Miller (2003) make suggestions how to be achieved in teaching listenin with authentic materials by go through main three stages: Pre-listening, While- Listening and Post-Listening. These steps help learners meet the goals of learning with technology.

Computer as technology is considered to promote language learning all four skills, listening, speaking, reading and writing skills Hoopingarner (2009). The use of computer and the internet in classrooms is essential to actualize development in listening comprehension and oral skills, because computer environment allows fast developmental assessment and fast update. There are lots of websites benefit learners by providing content that enables them to interact with one another. Speaking practice via the internet, there are cheap, useful and wise solutions available such as Skype, MSN Messenger, IM Myspace, Facebook, and GoogleTalk can be used to connect a native speaker on the internet and realize a real-time conversation for free. Besides, karaoke is also beneficial in that it requires a recitation which eventually leads to improvement in speaking and listening skill. YouTube is also the site that helps teachers in teaching listening and speaking skill as you have seen that YouTube.com is broadcasting many listening comprehension improving videos. If your Internet connection is too slow to apply it into your classroom immediately, you can download it and save it on your computer first. To facilitate this tool, you may have to create additional handouts which help learners interact, and understand, and apply what they learn.

Teaching with technology that emphasizes on entertainment may be fun in the classroom but you have to be aware that the use of technology needs to support objectives, and students learning. Teacher can teach to reach curriculum goals in a variety of ways and methods. Why it is necessary to emphasize the entertaining aspect of using multimedia environments into your classroom. Because it makes learning language easier and the more important thing is that it makes learning permanent. For example, movies, cartoon, talk show, games show, and reality show. They are a good equipment of teaching English as a foreign Language and improve students’ comprehension. The most important thing to apply those technologies into your classroom is to help learners reach learning objectives.

Aural/oral sites - specific uses


In this week we are assigned to discuss about the websites that we used in our classroom and also recommend to our classmates. As for me, I actually did not recommend any websites to the others because all I used in my class was the sites that everyone knows. I found many interesting and very useful sites from our professor and our classmates. They are so excellent of doing so. It is such a great opportunity to learn from the excellent ones. The following are all wonderful websites that I have seen from their suggestions.

http://www.onestopenglish.com/section.asp?sectionType=listsummary&catid=59414
for lesson plan
http://www.esl-lab.com/
listening lab and listening task for any levels and any topics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/pron/
for learning language and pronunciation
http://esl.about.com/od/conversationlessonplans/Conversation_Lesson_Plans_for_English_Learners_at_All_Levels.htm
for Conversation Lesson Plans for English Learners at All Levels
http://www.esl-galaxy.com/speaking.html
for ESL Communicative Lesson Plan Resources
http://www.freerice.com/
Vocabulary game for donation to the hungry people
Http://www.npr.org/
for listening to news stories and read the text at the same time at the National Public Radio site
http://www.elfs.com/
for practicing with idioms, pronunciation, spoken grammar and more at Adam Radio’s English Learning Fun Site (ELFS)


They are all the best I have learned and that's all for this week.