Apart from the Chinese Testing International website, where you can download past papers, I’m only aware of two online HSK preparation websites: Global Exam and Hello HSK. Global Exam is a fee-paying platform. So I’m likely to try Hello HSK as part of my winter study plan. I will post a review of the website…
Following my experience volunteering at the London 2012 Olympics, I am hoping to do it all over again at Rio in 2016. I’m very excited about this prospect and would love to improve (and use) my Chinese skills at the Games.
MA DTLT 2014 Group Flipgrid Questions! This week one of our tasks was to select an article from the University of Nottingham library about social media use in the language classroom. We were required to make a simple presentation giving details of the main aim of the study, the students involved, the social media tools…
Here’s a small write-up on Informal Learning by the Huffington Post Here’s the infographic
Background At the end of November I attended a talk at the AmCham China Conference Center in Beijing, examining why education has failed to keep up with the fundamental changes driven by new technologies. The speaker, Noel Thomas, Co-Principal of Yew Chung International School of Beijing (YCIS Beijing), provided some insightful analysis on the current…
With embarrassing memories of pathetic stick men and random colours splashed on canvas during secondary school art class in mind, I challenged myself to making visual representations of the concepts of Personalised Learning. These images are based on the main ideas from my second core reading, Personalised and Self Regulated Learning in the Web 2.0…
The Social Web One of the core readings this week, Future Learning Landscapes: Transforming Pedagogy through Social Software by McLoughlin and Lee (2008), highlights the challenges of integrating social software tools into learning environments. Social learning is an ideal that strongly resonates with me. Indeed, my PLE demonstrates the emphasis I place on human interaction…
Accessing Online Libraries This week we were challenged with finding an academic article about the use of social media in the language classroom and creating a presentation (in PowerPoint) based on the article. The task helped to develop my skills in acessing and searching the University of Nottingham’s online academic libraries. Knowing that one of…
Based on our core readings for this week (Roed 2003, Horwitz 1986, von Worde 2003 and Hurd 2007) here is my list of priorities for an Anxiety-Free Learning Experience: I feel that my role as a teacher, the transferor of knowledge, is facilitated when students are at ease. In fact, I feel that if…
Background One evening I spoke with a friend about a theory I had about the ‘newness’ of the Chinese language being learned on an international scale and the lack of experience of native Chinese speakers listening to non-natives speaking their language. My theory goes that a lack of experience on the side of the native…