Week 7. An inspiring week
This week is very interesting as we learn about learner
autonomy, mobile learning and one computer class. All articles related to the
topics are very inspiring.
1. Learner autonomy
As
mentioned by Dimitrios Thanasoulas and Richard Smith, learner autonomy is a new
perspective in the context of language learning. It is widely referred to in
the field of ELT only over the last decade.
Autonomy has been defined or used in different ways y the experts b but
in general note,
autonomy, as quoted by Holec (1981: 3, cited in Benson & Voller, 1997: 1)
is 'the ability to take charge of one's
learning'. Learner autonomy is meant as
giving students a ‘greater responsibility
for, and take charge of, their own
learning’.
Enhancing
learner autonomy can be done with or without technology. Group work, discussion
and presentation can enhcane students autonomy. Recently, I tried to develop my students’ autonomy by making them
aware of the advantages of their
mobile devices for learning English. I
introduced them to some links on the internets where they can learn various
Englis skills. I showed them some
interesting English videos
provided among others by anglo-link.com , www.listen-and-write.com/ and http://learningenglish.voanews.com/. I
designed some assignments and homework
which make them have to study by themselves. I asked every student to
create a reflective blog which I use as
a controling tool to check what they have done and learned. I was so glad to see
their enthusiasm in selecting the videos, watching them and responding to what
they learned from the videos. I find
teaching is not a burden but very insteresting and challenging. You can check what my students’ have done and
learned during the last two weeks by visiting their blogs. Some of the blogs
are:
2. Mobile learning
(m-learning).
We now use different kinds of mobile phone or android
phones. Mostly we use it for reading
ebooks, chatting, social networking, and so on. Advances in technology of communcation have
increased the interest of language educators to
utilize the newly invented devices for mobile learning (m-learning) iPhone or
Android phone are among devices with
enhanced capabilities that have hundreds
of thousands of apps (applications) to choose. The Apple iPad and other new
tablet computers are adding to the mobile app frenzy. This is an invaluable advantages technology has given to the language learning
methodology. It provides teachers or
instructors a wider opportunity to choose the availbles application for language
learning or teaching purposes. I often
use my iPad to surf the webs I want on the internet while some of my students
use their iPhones or android phones to listen to the audio or watch the English vidoes I assigned for them.
3. One computer class
Sometime we only have one computer to use in the
class. Creative teacher can make use of it for better learning purposes. I usually use one computer method for teaching both large and small
classes. This way does not only help save my time, as I prepared my teaching
material at home, but also help engage the students to the class. I usually
used power point for large classes. Last week I and mys Linguistics Resarach
Methods students use power point to review several articles on linguistics research.
We discussed some important aspects of writing and the use of several academic
words.
