Reading/writing and technology-enhanced lesson plans

READING, WRITING AND TECHNOLOGY

What is first: the egg or the chicken?

Twenty three hundred years ago Aristotle had reflected about this dilemma. The question is not, of course, only related with the egg itself, but with life and evolution. Similar reflections and contributions have been made from great people: Plato and Stephen Hawking, for example, including of course, Darwin’s. Even though this predicament involves a great universe of discussion, it is somehow also related to language learning.

Let’s say it might be a kind of circular reference when speaking about reading, writing and technology, as we read to understand technology and use technology to improve our reading, or that of our students. The reading process is first developed; then, the writing one. Decoding is one of the steps. Uttering ah, ma, and relating these sounds —whatever the language— with signs will lead us to begin building phonemes and words, and consequently, reading and writing will develop hand by hand.

A writing instrument is a piece of technology… it works as my 6-inches beech stick, cut from one of the trees my father cultivated decades ago, that I use to draft and write in the sand or in the earth floor when there are no white boards and dry erase markers –not even blackboards– in some remote places I sometimes teach in. A couple of PVC one-and-a-half-inches elbows joined together with a small piece of same-diameter pipe will work as an ancient phone receiver with which we may hear and listen our own voice. This ancient pieces of technology still work. And I suggest my students try these ones before learning ICT.

What is first: apply reading and writing current technology in ESL/EFL teaching or applying reading and writing ICT in primary language? Own experience has shown that although this will behave like a circular reference, it does work. I ask my ESL students to read in L1, Spanish, a brief chapter of his/her favorite author aloud, seated in an author’s chair in front of the class with the best intonation and legibility. We, the audience, comment what he student should do to improve the reading. Once the student is confident in reading aloud in L1, we may proceed to integrate technology in our classroom.

Fernando

Aural/oral skill-building

Developing aural/oral skills in the students

 

How can we develop aural and oral skills in our students? This could be the one-million shekels question, and it has been undoubtedly being asked for years by all language and music teachers. Music teachers involved in developing oral skills? Yes, and also in developing aural skills indeed. Have you ever thought in asking the help of a musician to enhance your own aural skills? Search one and do it. Let’s hear with our hands (it reminds me that great and beautiful lady named Helen Keller, deafblind since birth. I invite you to watch the film “"Land of Silence and Darkness", 1971, directed by Werner Herzog). We speak by imitation, and babies look at interlocutor lips when trying to reproduce sounds and words. If we ask a singer, be he or she a folk one or a bel canto diva to speak our own language, a beautiful intonation we will hear. If we ask the singer to sing and put one of our hands in his/her throat we will feel vibrations. Let’s do it in our own throat and ask our students to do the same, themselves and with each other. Perceiving those vibrations will give us an idea of how good is our pronunciation. This is a simple way to begin improving our listening skills.

Our oral skills will develop without problem (considering our phonological apparatus is in good shape) if we practice reading in silence. Reading exactly as you have just read this words: in silence. All elements included in uttering sounds will automatically position to actually reproduce the sound or word we are reading. What we have to do, then is actually producing those sound and words we read. If we do this in our own language, and reading with the characteristics we should (e.g. pause, stress, intonation) we are practicing in our own language and daily improving our oral skills. Have we ever asked our ESL students either in beginners or advanced level to read in silence? I am almost sure you have not, because we think it is unnecessary; what we want is to listen them speaking the foreign language… and speaking it aloud. Own experience has demonstrated that good listeners are good speakers, and good speakers are good readers, everything in a cycle. The more developed are our aural/oral skills in our own language, the better will be in another one.

Foreign accent? Of course, except we begin learning several languages since our birth… and even so, the accent we listen more frequently (mother, father, nanny, uncle, etc.) will predominate in us.

The tools and strategies we have learnt about this week do help to improve our oral/aural skills, and those of our students. Using them and sharing experiences from colleague teachers all over the world will certainly improve those skills, including mine.

Fernando

Web skills and the context of teaching

May we teach web skills in a risky environment?

 

 

Every educator perfectly knows that the environment that surrounds the teaching-and-learning act directly influences its quality: the worst affected is the apprentice.

The context I teach in is placed in what is called the most dangerous city in the world: Ciudad Juarez. Some of my students have had relatives —parents included— who have died in a violent way; family income is below poverty level; some of the students are head of household; pregnancy is present in teenagers students; just a very few have PC at home and internet access is either at school or in the cafe internet sites.  The way the students access the Web is mainly at school, in the computing laboratories. About 22% of the students will abandon the school before finishing it; from the rest, more than 90% is eager to become part of the work force in assembly factories, in case they might find a position. In addition, the huge unemployment in this area and their lack of experience make worst their future. The contrast with El Paso, TX, neighbor city to Juarez, is colossal. In addition, only a very few of my students (less than 2%) have a Tourist Visa; the others are more interested in surviving than in becoming tourists: all they want is to learn and survive, or learn how to survive in this very high risk environment.

Why must my students be clever in web skills?  First of all, I, as their teacher, their guide, must be skilful. Then, share that learning with my students… although, in some cases, I am the one who learns computing skills from them. What I am interested in, committed to, is to show how they may take full advantage of their time at school, master each of the skills they learn, and continue studying by themselves in the laboratories or in the café internet sites. They have to learn and to decide by themselves, improve their self-learning skills, and be prepared to confront every day of their life, be their own teachers.

Web and ICT skills are what they have to master in order to learn anywhere, anytime they have computing and web access, whatever they decide to be their way of living. And web skills proficiency for learning ESL in this vicinity to USA is a must.

Fernando

Interactive Web

Web skills and online courses

Online courses have different advantages: the student has the choice to adapt the tasks to his/her own regular activities and prepare essays almost anywhere and anytime, not precisely in the classroom. The student has no opportunity to have face-to-face discussion as it usually occurs in the daily life, however. Even though every day, thanks to globalization and ICT, people has been studying, developing, dealing with and solving quite different issues and problems in a virtual way. I have learnt in this course that it is quite necessary to be up-to-date in reference with the web technologies, especially if one, as a teacher, wants to use CALL to enhance the students’ learning and, in my personal case, my own learning.

Blogging is a stupendous way to learn and share our learning, ideas, expectations, projects and researches. Blogging is only a way of communicating with peers or colleagues or students or administrators, but, as I call this site at school, it is the expression wall in which one has the freedom to express with whole creativity, what one has to say. I will share in this blog what I learn.

Fernando

Learn and share

What do we learn for?

Undoubtfully we learn first to survive, then for many other reasons, for our own growth, or our culture’s growth, even for own —or for others’— pleasure. Like art and literature. Or cooking or gardening. But as a teacher, even before I was considered one, I learnt that my learning, my knowledge, my culture was being shared to me by others. It is like an open spring, like a fountain, whose water runs all around, and one has the choice of drinking or going away. When we motivate our students and encourage them to learn wisdom water will spread as far as we share our knowledge.

Disco et commûnicô means not other thing that Learn and share.

Fernando