Reflection (Week 6)

CALL materials can be developed from certain theories of learning or from a specific problem. I believe that both kinds of materials are equally effective if they are applied to the right context.

I believe that the type of English is being taught to the students could be a factor deciding on the choice of CALL programs. For example, if a teacher is teaching English for a specific purpose, say, workplace English, the behavior and the problems of the learner could be context-specific. If a CALL program of which the materials are designed based on a specific problem, the fit between the CALL and the actual context could be better. However, I do not mean that CALL materials designed from general learning theories are useless in this example. Learners of workplace English are English learners as well. They must have the characteristics of general English learners. When they have problems that all English learners have, CALL materials developed from learning theories could be a choice to help them.

How can one get that right context for a CALL program? Evaluation of the CALL program chosen is the key. With careful evaluation, the teacher will know what areas of the CALL programs chosen need modification. This will probably results in a best fit between the CALL and the learning context.

Well...

Just because you submit the reading response before the lesson doesn't mean you are more hardworking than the others. Just because you submit the reading response weeks after the lesson doesn't mean you are lazier than anyone. Where does the unfairness come from?! There are reasons for people to submit their responses late as people have different commitments. As long as everyone has already tried his or her best, that's good enough.

Just can't understand the logic of this "unfairness theory".

Reflection (Week 5)

Generally speaking, in my experience, all students have different behavior when they are online compared with the time when they are offline.

The difference can be shown in their ability to understand English online. They tend to understand English better when I communicate with my students online through email or msn, especially on msn, where the conversations are usually casual. On msn, my students use Chinese in their messages, but I use English to communicate with them. I always used to think that they couldn’t understand my English messages much, but to my surprise, the flow of conversation is kind of smooth. Some of them even reply to me with short messages in English too. Compared with the time in the classroom, when I speak to them in English and they don’t really respond, it is quite different. I believe that it is because they can read the words in our conversation online and have more time to think about the meaning of my messages. Besides, unlike classroom, there is no pressure from their peer on msn, so they have no need for being afraid of making mistakes in front of others when they reply to my messages.

As it seems that students, especially those with low English level, have better abilities to use English without the presence of the others, how can we create such an environment in our normal teaching in the school, so that the students can show us their best performance? Is technology the solution? Does it mean that more activities should be done on computer on English lessons in school?