our group work

Oh god can't believe that the whole semester is nearly to the end. I am so sad that my individual work didn't get a good mark, so that I am trying to make my grade up for improving my group work. This time I think we use the CALL techniques teaching English shows very effective directions. We combined all kinds of resources that we can use together, such as hot potato, the on-line dictionary, and, the discussion forum, and the YouTube. But our work is not a random massive work that only a pile of web links. We do have focus of each topic, like my part is about the accommodation and culture. The accommodation is mainly focus on listen skills, students can learn a lot of new words through the listening drills, and a extensive reading is going with. This activity focus is about reading, it has on-line dictionary spelunker, and when you click the new vocabulary, it automatically leads you to the Macmillan dictionary to see the explanation and pronunciation. After that students have to get the practice drills done. This is mainly focused on reading skills. I think my partners did their jobs well too. Because we got a clear line of what to do, and the instruction is very clear too. I like this design; I will probably apply this in my later on teaching experience. What a great thing it is for us to have those high techniques to enhance students' study and interests. I think especially for the reading part, when students are doing reading exercises, large amount of new vocabulary is always the reason that sets them back, and they are too lazy to check up them in the dictionary, with the help of the links students can get easy assess to the web dictionary and learn the new words immediately.

new finding about a Omegle

Recently I found an interesting website which is called Omegle and it’s a website that connected to whole world and if you type something it randomly send the message to anyone in the world who is also on the Omegle. Its basic idea is just like a chat room and the difference is that you can not trace his/her/it IP address and you don't know who is talking to you and where that person is from, it's all picked randomly online. The main language is used in English and I heard a funny thing is that we two strangers bump into each other online if one says where you from and then 95% or above that person is from China ha-ha interesting, because Chinese people would like to ask this questions and westerners turn to not ask. I think this is a cool website coz you could chat with someone you totally have no idea of who that person is, and if you don't feel like to talk to this person anymore you just click the disconnect and then the system is going to choose a new stranger to talk to you. But this is also something that we called disadvantage, because if you guys do not leave each other the contact then you may never meet him/her again, no way that you could trace this person anymore. But anyway we are not talking about social or flatting with someone, here is the language learning that we are talking about. I think this is a good way to learn English since the whole website force you to do so, you don't know who that person is in the first place and you have to use English the international language to communicate with others. A better thing that I want to mention here compared to second life is this is language focus, that is no game no distractions.
There is another function of this website as well. It has video chat room and you could have someone who’s randomly picked from the site to have video chat with him/her. However I don’t recommend that just like what I mentioned previously here is the language learning we are concerned not to make some real friends though.( however you can make some, but I just don’t want to things are out of the track). Anyway this is a good tool and a fresh one for students to try out. But I have to say that this web also got its disadvantages coz sometimes people talk sex online and maybe it's not appropriate for teenagers. However as soon as you find someone is talking something that loathes you could quit the conversation immediately. All is up to you.

about the copy right

I am from mainland China and before coming to Hong Kong I did not realize something that related to copy right, we download movies music and software from the websites. I know it is an illegal thing however everyone around you does so, therefore just can't see the reason why not doing the same thing as they do. (Ok this is the way our Chinese people survive, please do not judge).
When I came to Hong Kong the copyright is highlighted here just like those in western countries. Even put a book in a copy machine could put you in a jail. So give a second thought when you are doing the copy. When we write papers professors emphasis the importance of the declaration of original work. Make sure that our reference is APA style and when quote someone's word we have to use quote and unquote. The access of the website has some restriction as well. I still remember that Google China could give you a million accesses to the music that you want and you can download then as you want. Here in Hong Kong we don't have that right and we can view movies and video clips however here only YouTube is available. I know respect the intelligence property is crucial, but it all depends on what situation you are in. Especially right now the CALL is a great tool to teach language and we sometimes have to use some part of the movie or the trailer of the movie to students to demonstrate the knowledge that we want to present are we going to ask an official permission to do that? If so the world is outrageous.
I agree that when things are related to publish it has to have a clear statement of the resource of the reference, because publish one's paper is really a big deal and the research is not an easy thing. However if I am going to be arrested just because I play a movie in front of our class I think that's really ridiculous. But I have to go for the side of original work, because in China the phenomena of copy is very server and no one really write something, they steal others results and turn it into their own language and there you go a whole new research paper is born. This is really a huge impact on those who put their hearts in the academic and not in a good way.
Another thing bothers me is that after finishing our group wiki page we can’t even make it go public due to some copy of others work. But I think it is a great reference for all of us no matter now or in the future. Sometimes if we still can refer back to what we did before to look for more ideas that’ll be awesome. But I respect the copyright.

About My word

Last week we have a trail on the great software My Word. It is really an amazing work for the non-native learners of English. Firstly we have come across the check my words part, that is software used in Microsoft word. First we download the software and the open a new file of the word then it automatically appears on the upside of the tool bar. We all know that the grammar check of the Microsoft is not reliable; sometimes students are counting too much on the check. However, students lack the judge of the right or wrong of the grammar especially when their grammar structures are still under construct. Therefore with the help of My Word students can see common errors with a word. Select a word and press click to see common errors and complete explanations and practice. The funniest thing is if you write a wrong sentence and to be lucky enough, the software will provide you with a song which indicates your error, and this interesting part make students are involved into the learning plus they will have a deep impression and never make the same mistake again. It can also highlight potential common errors in your document, or some words you are uncertain about its pronunciation, they software can make it work.They next thing in help with learning English is the My Word tool bar, this bar is very helpful for students to scan the English websites. Because they provides translation of certain word and sentences. However it has a flaw that is when you highlight a whole sentence, the translation might not be so precise in Chinese language. It also helps out that when students reading the long passage they are too lazy to finish it because they don’t have the vocabulary large enough. However something is better than nothing, this software is much better than online translation website. I would like to use it in my future teaching if I got the chance.

about the hotpetato

.In our previous week of class, the professor introduced the software hot potato to us. I've never used that before, however I will use it for my coming teaching profession. It is easy to use, not that complicated even for a girl like who don't know much about computer thing still can easily to handle it and get things done. With the help of hot potato we teachers can create various practice drill such as matching, filling the blanks, cloze, and multiple choice. I think it is particularly useful for those students who are preparing to take TOEFL or ILETS tests. Students have to face a lot of new vocabulary during the test, especially for the new generation of TOEFL test, they have to process the whole exam on computer as well, so that they have to familiar with type and read on the screen. The hot potato is definitely the great tool for them to practice. For the listening drill I can create some cloze to them and then play the audio to them. By means of this students can do the dictation practice and the fast type on computer. The matching items could also be used in reading comprehension, because during the real test they will come across a lot of questions asking about put the sentences into right order according to its means. The hot potato gives more flexibility to us teachers; sometimes it is hard to find appropriate items to fit different levels of students. With the new software we can create the questions fit our requirements. Both teachers and students can benefit from it. The only limit here is that if you want to crate large numbers of items yet short of time, this is going to be a problem. Because the unregister user can only have limited number of items quota, which stops them from making a lot of items.

something about second life

We had a very excited experience on Monday about the tour guide of second life. To a game player it is a funny and exciting game, but to me it is a bit complicated. As far as I know many girls play game just for fun or relax unlike boys like play games that full of challenge, and I am one of these girls. So if the game is set for girls to learn English I think might be a little inappropriate, and most girls will lose their patience before learned the language. However if this is designed for boys things are even worse. we keep hearing that parents complain about their boys spend too much time in front of computer, so if the second life is designed for boys to learn English I think the purpose can not be focused, instead they will pay more attention to how to play the game and how to challenge themselves in the game. I have to admit that the game certainly has some interesting parts, like you can go to any community you like and you can create your own business, know some cool people from all around world. These things can only be beneficial to those who are already familiar with the language and the whole game thing. Young children and teenagers can not find the balance between the game and language learning. Sometimes the community might have some freaks are talking something that not suitable for young children. Therefore whether the game is the play-centered or language-centered is a kind of tricky case here.
Another concern of mine is that sometimes the whole community got someone talks about sex and something inappropriate for teenagers. Younger students could be lack of self-control and it is certainly the responsibility for us teachers and parents to take care of what they are accessing online, and in additional the on-line world is also a place where everybody wears masks. In a word, I personally not that highly recommend for the second life as a language tool.

web sources when learning English

Having been a student for so many years, I do understand how much the score means to a student. However as an English teacher how to utilize the language in our daily life even our academic life is much more significant than just get the high score in the test. Most Chinese students can get very high marks in the test, yet, can't even complete a whole sentence. Some even say they can't talk when facing a foreigner. The students themselves have nothing to be blame as aiming excellent results only. But as far as I am concerned, English is a language, it has much more interesting things than just choosing a right answer in the grammar test. It is the language itself that you could use to express and to communicate.
So let them speak and intriguer their interests are extremely important. Luckily we are born in the time of IT. We have great resources to count on. Such as Speak2me and put English listening club. The speak2me is a useful and interesting website. It is mainly for students to practice their spoken English. It provides free speak software to download, and free on-line course to the students of various topics. Firstly students sign up in the web and download the software, and then choose the topics that they are interested in, then they can speak to the microphone through the software, then the system will give you some instructions and score your speech. After the system scored the students' speech it will give a sample answer for the students referring to.The put club web is another resource site for students practice their listening skills in the daily life and various purposes. It contains BBC CNN ABC news and some VOA special English for junior learners. Students can download the video and the listen mp3 for the material they like. When I was a teacher back in China I suggested my students to visit these websites regularly, since I know learning language does not mean have a 45min class per day. They should have enough exposure in the language, and actively to absorb new knowledge. My students can be marked so excellent in the test; they can also make it to a proficient foreign language speaker. After all, practice makes perfect.