Thursday, January 7, 2016
Friday, January 1, 2016
How should cyberlearning
be?
First of all, cyberlearning should have a
specific purpose for the students such as if the lesson is about how to
construct a request sentence, the cyberlearning should be focused on that
topic. Because students can be distracted by the computer and various programs
and they can start doing something else. In addition, the applications for the
lesson should be selected carefully by the teacher. So that the lesson can
continue smoothly and without any misunderstanding due to the programs. Teacher
can help in that situation but in a huge conflict the teacher can have
difficulty to help the students. Furthermore, the teacher should be sure about
the students’ proficiency in terms of using the computers and the programs
during the lesson. Because having enough knowledge with regard to engaging the
computers is essential to maintain the lesson. Overall, the teachers should be
careful to students’ needs, their knowledge of the programs and whether the
teacher can teach a specific and focused topic or not.
Thursday, December 24, 2015
Monday, December 21, 2015
Implementing Video in ELT Context
Implementing Video in ELT Context
Video can
be implemented into ELT context in various aspects. Up to now my teachers have
taught grammar with video. However, I can use video to show the communication
skills as well. Students should be exposed to communication strategies with
visual techniques. For example, to be more realistic I can request from my
friends to animate the video that I will show to my class. They can show how to
communicate in the street, in the hospital or in the coffee shop with different
conversations and students can be familiar with the sentence structures with
these videos. Furthermore, this video technique will be more memorable for
students because they will watch the video, not write anything. Also, there is
a chance that they can watch latter over and over.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Thursday, December 3, 2015
Halil Mutlu and Naim Süleymanoğlu
Verbs
Gap-fill exercise
Fill in all the gaps, then press "Check" to check your answers. Use the "Hint" button to get a free letter if an answer is giving you trouble. You can also click on the "[?]" button to get a clue. Note that you will lose points if you ask for hints or clues!
Monday, November 30, 2015
Storybird & Storify
I wrote stories in Turkish when I was at secondary
school. But the experience of Storybird and Storify were my first attempts of
writing stories in English. Also, they were the first experiences of writing
stories online. I was very excited when I published them. Because the two
stories would be seen by everyone and it was kind of proud.
There is a guideline which is about presenting our
visuals to everyone. The guideline consists of arrangement, balance, color,
legibility and appeal. It is important that visuals should be appropriate for
students. And preparing a story like I did should be for students. How to make
these stories according to students’ needs? We can follow this guideline.
Arrangement should be consistent. For example, the storyline should be clear
that students will not confuse while reading. Then, the correct color is really
important while reading the stories. The background should not be darker than
images and text. While I was constructing my story, I paid attention to it.
Thirdly, legibility is also an important point so that students will not have
trouble while reading the story. The font should be big enough. Then, the story
should be appeal so that students want to read more. Every teacher should teach
these to their students so that students can read more consciously.
Moreover, I want to compare these two story maker
applications. To be honest, I loved Storybird more than Storify. Because I
could not get the idea of Storify. I found more backgrounds and visuals in
Storybird. I could construct my story with different pictures. However, in
Storify I could not even add another page for my story. It occurred only one
page. In Storybird I added pages and it was like a real story book.
Students can use encoding and decoding while
generating stories like me. Encoding means writing and decoding means reading.
Students can listen their teachers before forming a story or they read some
guidelines about how to form a story. This can be decoding and students can be
sure what they do. Also students encode while writing their stories. Practicing
and producing teach best to students.
Thursday, November 26, 2015
Wednesday, November 25, 2015
SwiftKey
SwiftKey is a keyboard that is applicable for Android,
iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. You can write with your personal predictions. It
has smart autocorrect that you can write faster as well. In addition, it has an
interesting feature that when you put an emoji, it senses your emoji and turns
it to a sentence that you meant. For instance, when you put a kissing emoji, it
perceives it as “love you”. The feature that I like most is typing with
one-hand. You do not have to press keys one by one. You can flow your hand in
every letter. And it writes easily. Furthermore, the second feature that I like
most is being bilingual. You can write with two languages and it does not
correct you unnecessarily.
I have experienced SwiftKey with my sister’s phone. It
was really enjoyable while writing. I have used it in Turkish. Firstly, it
shows you the most frequent words that you use. It is useful for writing fast
and easily. I wrote “hello” first, then it recommended me to write “how are
you?” in Turkish. Secondly, while writing, it predicts the word that you can
use with the previous word. For instance, I wrote “I will come”, it predicted “you”
and “tomorrow”. I think SwiftKey tries to make connections with words. Thirdly,
you can write without pressing each words. In other words, you can flow your
hand within the keyboard. It was a wonderful type of writing. I wrote many
words with flowing my finger in each letter.
It was a different experience. In addition, I realized
that we should be open to new innovations to give color to our life. Instead of
using the same keyboard, you can use SwiftKey to make your life easy.
Friday, November 20, 2015
Corpus-Based Tools
In the internet there are a lot of
corpus-based tools in analyzing your own writing. I have tried some of them
which are Readlang, Read-able and Word and Phrase. I have analyzed one of my
essay’s one part with Readlang to find the CEFR level. I got C2 Master level.
Actually I am very happy to see that result. Because the writing that I sent
was my first essay, my first attempt to write an essay. I believe the style and
my word choices indicate that result. Also I sent it to Read-able to see the
rate of readability. The result was promising. The reader that I chose for that
essay was around 21 or 22 years old. The result was the same. Also I looked at
the Flesch Kincaid Reading Ease which is a part of Read-able. It was 30 out of
100. That means the text that I sent was complicated to understand. The grade
level was about 16. According to education level of USA, 16 age was around high
school. I was a bit confused with that result. If the text was complicated to
understand, how could high school students understand it? Maybe the education
level has an effect on it. The education system is much better and students
develop faster. In Word and Phrase my vocabulary profile was ‘academic’ enough.
These results show me that while I am choosing my words, I can use more
academic words and I can use thesaurus for different word choices. As a strength
I can say the structures that I use are enough academic. I try to use various
structure types in my writings. I can develop my writings if I see different
text types and read for more information. Also practicing all time will be
helpful to improve my writing skill. And after every writing I can use corpus-based
tools to examine my level and effectiveness of my words. When I am a teacher, I
will train my students to analyze their own writing with some of these tools. Because
these tools show your writing ability overall. And these tools give you an idea
of how to improve your writing skill. I believe that these tools would be
practical for my students.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Grammar Intuition v. Corpus Data
This resource is about correction or finding the errors in the sentences. There are seven different categories which are prepositions, singular-plural, word order, gerund-infinitive, simple past- present perfect, conditionals and formulaics. There are errors in the sentences in each category. With click to CONC, you can see how native speakers achieve the meaning the writer is looking for. You can see different usage of the words and you can find the correct answer by looking at the answers of native speakers. Next, you correct the sentence in the “correction space” then you can check it. Also it gives you feedback (FB) whether your answer is correct or not.
( If
you click on the photo, you can see much bigger.)
Test Your Vocabulary Level
I have tested my English proficiency with Duolingo Test Center. I also tested
my English level with other tests which are “Test Your Word Knowledge”, “Test
Your Vocab” and “Vocabulary Ugent” from Ghent University. Duolingo was the
hardest one. It asks you different kind of questions such as multiple choice,
writing the sentence that you hear and choosing the words that you know. I think
this test is the best one that really shows your English level. Because you
cannot determine your level based on only one question style. The different
feature from others is that other tests were based on only one question style. Actually
all four are similar in the basis. They evaluate your vocabulary level with
asking whether you know that word or not. Duolingo reflected my actual level of
English. The description that gave at the last was the level that I thought. I
do not like “Test Your Vocab” because it gives you a lot of words and you
choose the ones you know. Maybe you know other words that do not exist on that
list. Also the result was not satisfying. In other words, I did not believe my
score when I saw. “Test Your Word Knowledge” is more convincing. Because you
learn other words inside the description while choosing the correct description
of the words. It was a long test any way. Lastly, “Vocabulary Ugent” from Ghent
University was really interesting. My score was good. I did not choose any nonword.
When I saw result, I was both surprised and sad. The result showed me that I
can differentiate word and nonword. But my level was not the one that I
expected. Nevertheless, all testes were enjoyable. I did not know these kinds
of tests. I am looking forward to being a teacher. I will definitely test my
students with those tests.
These are the links that you might want to try J
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
GOOGLE ALERTs
As a TEFL student I can choose topics about teaching and learning
English with GOOGLE ALERTs. I can add alerts such as best way to learn
vocabulary, improving listening skill or interesting facts about English history.
GOOGLE ALERTs enables sending your alerts to your friends or teachers. I can
share articles or news with my friends and teachers. Also, this is a useful
device for finding different topics that belong to important people in the
field of TEFL. Also GOOGLE ALERTs send you an e-mail about topic or topics that
you are interested. Therefore, you do not have to search the topic again and again.
I liked this feature. I have read a few articles about what GOOGLE ALERTs mean
and how it works. I think it is a bit complicated. I had difficulty while
figuring out. When I am a teacher, GOOGLE ALERTs can be useful for my students.
It is an interactive online application. My students can enjoy it while working
on it. I did not see any educational side of GOOGLE ALERTs but still it can be
a good opportunity for students to see others ideas and comments on different
topics.
Here a few sites that help you understand how GOOGLE ALERTs works J
Thursday, November 5, 2015
The Lumineers - Ho Hey
The Lumineers - Ho Hey
Gap-fill exercise
Fill in all the gaps, then press "Check" to check your answers. Use the "Hint" button to get a free letter if an answer is giving you trouble. You can also click on the "[?]" button to get a clue. Note that you will lose points if you ask for hints or clues!
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