Primarily, insights into my learning on a Masters distance course with the University of Nottingham.
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…
“A target-language-only approach may be distressing for lower level students” (Von Woorde, 2003:7) My stance on the issue of L1 use in the L2 language learning classroom Until now, I have been very ‘anti’ the use of student’s L1, and have never used Chinese in my class. I believe this stems from my CELTA training,…
This week we are thinking about to what extent teachers influence our students’ degree of motivation and their self-esteem. The readings revolved around these core texts: Language Learner Behaviour in a Virtual Environment (Roed, 2003), Students’ perspectives on Foreign Language Anxiety (Van Woorde, 2003) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (Horowitz K. et al, 1986). Some of…
My experience as a Distance Learner In his book On The Internet, Dreyfus (2001) puts forward the arguement that the physical presence of a teacher is a crucial part of the learning process. Drawing on my own experience, then, as an individual, I would say I am very interested in the power of social interactions…
In an article entitled At The Heart of It: The Concept of Presence, Lombard and Ditton conceptualise the idea of presence or the “the perceptual illusion of nonmediation”. Regarding media (TV, computer, radio etc.), presence relates to how it naturally fits into our lives, “An enhanced sense of presence is central to the use, and…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC0G7TRGbd0&w=560&h=315 Just when you thought it was safe to to use the terms ‘Education’ and ‘Learning’ for the things that kids do at school…Bibblio CEO Mads Holmen flips these concepts on their heads. About Bibblio Bibblio is a social platform for discovering and collecting the web’s best learning materials. According to Holmen, Bibblio “has two…
ACTION RESEARCH Teaching English as a Foreign Language Background – In order to make practical application of knowledge gained on my Masters course and to better understand the value of technology use in the TEFL classroom, I plan to review the use of the IWB and Activ Table at my school. Plan – Following the…
This week’s readings covered both VLEs and PLEs. This lead us to draw our own visual representations of our PLEs. Looking back on that exercise, here are some of my thoughts. My PLE is a collection of “something” that transcends physical and virtual environments Parts of my PLE collection are stored physically, such as books…
Although I have heard of the terms VLE & PLE, I have not read about these concepts in detail before now. Indeed, without regard for literature definitions, for me, my PLE is a collection of offline and online/human and technological resources, that can be accessed at almost any time. My human resources are those in…
I saw this posted on an online ex-pat magazine. Always on the look-out for new digital projects, I made contact with the sender. More details, as and when.