10/4/13
Week 1 - Post a - October 5
One of the ways that I would like to improve as a teacher is that I would like use technology to encourage student discussions in English outside of the classroom. One of the things that I have noticed about most students is that while they are in class they will talk to each other in English, but once the class is over they immediately switch to Korean. What I would like to do is to post a topic and have students post responses to create a discussion that I could moderate and monitor. One of the software options I am considering is voicethread. The program allows users to create, comment on, and share group discussions, which is exactly what I am looking for.
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I believe that having students use the language outside of the classroom is definitely the most challenging thing to an ESL teacher. The harsh reality is that for most of the students, they only have your 40-50 minute class once a week. It's obvious that this limited exposure to a native speaker will not change their language ability to a great extent.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I have done in the past is to try and get my students to read English books and write a summary on it. Now I have never used a blog with my class but will definitely try in out in the future. Then other students could write comments on their classmate's blog.
Although I'm not familiar with the "Voicethread" software, using any method available to try to engage the students is great. It's always a uphill battle for us ESL teachers, it's our job to find new ways to capture their attention
Voicethread is a great way to get your students practicing English. You might also want to try something like a Facebook group for them to practice.
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