A good article on the problem of modern education, can be well used in the English speaking classroom if you study Education Module or in the English teaching methodology classroom!

Teaching languages with technology: tools that help students become fluent

Advertisement feature: From Padlets to Popplets, languages consultant Joe Dale shares the tools modern foreign languages teachers are turning to in their classroom

Joe Dale

Tue 13 May 2014 17.30 BSTFirst published on Tue 13 May 2014 17.30 BST

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 Technology lends itself very well to personalised and independent learning, allowing students to work at their own pace, says Joe Dale. Photograph: Rosetta Stone

Young people live their lives through technology: they are the web generation and they are hungry for more. Our challenge is to channel the natural enthusiasm our pupils have for ICT by using it in their everyday lives and embed it purposefully into the modern foreign languages (MFL) classroom.

There is great value in incorporating new technologies not as a bolt on or reward, but as an integral part of the process. This allows learners to foster the four c's: communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking. ICT lets learners easily draw on authentic resources that promote inter-cultural understanding and interact with virtual peers in real non-fabricated contexts.

Publishing students' multimedia outcomes on a blog or wiki gives them a real audience for their work, facilitates peer assessment through commenting and encourages them to raise their standards as a result. Virtual learning environments also offer students distance learning opportunities wherever and whenever they want. Tools like Padlet, Popplet, Linoit and Pinterest let students collaborate easily with others as a class or in small groups and reflect on learning.

Many MFL departments now run their own Twitter accounts to keep in touch with parents, inform pupils of important notices, for celebrating achievement and for retweeting interesting tweets about language learning such as authentic tweets in the target language or tweets for word/expression of the day. This can raise the profile of the school and help to connect with the wider community – @allsaintslingo and @EccoMFL are good current examples of this in action.

Technology lends itself very well to personalised and independent learning where students can work at their own pace, complete interactive exercises rigorously in class or at home and receive immediate feedback. Gaining points for their efforts and being able to compare their scores with their classmates is motivating for them too and adds an element of engaging gamification to their learning.

For any MFL teacher learning vocabulary is essential and Quizlet is an effective way of memorising and embedding words, phrases and making sound spelling links. Students and teachers can search for existing lists and easily create their own. Socrative is another free cross-platform tool which allows for classroom voting, instant feedback and formative assessment. You can send students multiple choice, true or false or short answer questions as well self-marking pre-made quizzes. Furthermore, using avatars instead of real pupils' faces may encourage increased participation especially from reluctant learners.

Rehearsing, recording and editing spoken work digitally allows pupils to improve their pronunciation, boost their confidence, extend their speaking and listen back as many times as they like. They can also produce a script individually or collaboratively through a Google doc and import their text into an online teleprompter like Cue Prompter or the Visioprompt app so they can record their audio while it scrolls up the screen using Audacity or Voice Record Pro. Some departments employ this technique, as well as Textivate and Triptico, to help students learn their controlled assessment pieces.

Video is another powerful vehicle in and out of the languages classroom. Making videos draws upon multiple intelligences, promotes creativity and fosters collaboration. The process gives students ownership of their work which increases engagement. Pupils can produce short films in the target language, create animations using apps such as Yakit Kids, Puppet Pals and Explain Everything screencasts, as well as peer assess each other's work. These videos can be easily uploaded and stored in the cloud, used to form part of an e-portfolio over time and are accessible at all times. Other tools used for generating e-portfolios and submitting homework are Edmodo or Showbie. The advantage of these tools is that students don't require an email address just a class code.

Using video to flip the classroom is another possibility where learners access the lesson content they would normally learn in class, at home which frees up more class time for practising and accessing higher-order thinking skills. The MFL department at Wildern School in Hampshire is currently experimenting with flipping and recording their findings on a dedicated blog. Flipping doesn't have to involve creating lots of new material. It can be as simple as sharing existing PowerPoints or screencasts.

To support colleagues who find technology integration challenging, here are some suggestions:

• Lead by example and introduce some of the easier tools or apps to begin with to boost confidence and then share outcomes generated through their use.

• Team-teach a lesson incorporating technology and afterwards discuss the successes and challenges.

• Offer in-house mentoring sessions at lunchtime, after school or during professional development days.

• Nominate student digital leaders who can troubleshoot issues and offer support in class.

• Propose having technology as a performance management target.

• Recommend signing up to Twitter and following the #MFLtwitterati or attending the ICT and Languages Conference (ILILC) in February at Southampton University.

• Suggest joining online communities like the TES MFL Forum and MFL resources.

• Sign up to your subject association such as Association for language Learning (ALL) in the UK

For the current generation of teachers using digital media may be a challenge. The good news is by using social media for support and integrating available tools and apps, connected teachers can access technology's power and potential for language learning. Let's make language classrooms for the web generation more relevant, engaging and accessible.

Joe Dale is an independent consultant and former languages teacher. He blogs at Integrating ICT into the MFL Classroom and tweets as @joedale.

https://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2014/may/13/modern-foreign-languages-technology-tools-students-fluent

Unique Russian Dialect Recorded in Alaska

article

When my Cognition fails me.....

Today I didn't recognize the word DENIAL reading words in the picture in the previous post (about the linguist's mind).

I even looked it up in the Dictionary!!! and was shocked to learn that I know it! !!!!! But of course I know it!!!!!
But I read it the way we read German words - it sounds the way it is written, or Latin...
Why so?...this question is vexing me now....

I do know that the verb is DENY and the noun is DENIAL. i know it like the ABC in my native language. But....What makes it slip from my perception and deceive me?
I read it over and over again and every time my eyes come to this borederline in the word between "N-I" I want to pronounce it as [ni] and not [nai].
TRIAL is no hindrance for my perception but DENIAL is...
There should be something about the universal structures I have in my mind, some other parallels unknown to me yet that make me stumble before reading it correctly...
The MIND...a mysterious creation....

INSIDE THE MIND OF A LINGUIST.....

What would you say to that??! :) :)

http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex/lingview.htm

E-Learning Resources

Here is a good article for those teachers who are involved in E-learning/teaching process.

I myself have not created many online materials, but for some online tests and the English Language Olympiad "Think, Feel, Act GREEN" (Moodle), the latter I enjoyed doing very much!!!
I wish I could work in a team of those teacher who could cooperate and instruct me how to do many things in e-format especially so that I have been developing my own course of Teaching English to Dog-lovers and Specialists which is presupposed to be taught online first.....
4 Ways To Perform A Post-Course Evaluation Analysis

And many others at: www.elearningindustry.com

TBL and PBL (2)
Task-based learning and Project-based learning

So, to cope with the Fishbone activity students work in groups.

To me the ideal variant is a group/team of 3 students: 2 are too few for collective thinking, 4 are a bit too many and besides students tend to work in pairs within the group of 4 and then just sum up their results so there is no real discussion.
Of course the way you organize it depends on how large your class is.

The same important is the changeability of a group  as it will be tedious if the same students work in one and the same group the whole year round.
The first time make this process comfortable for them, let them make groups on their own, then you can do it yourself knowing students' level and preferences.

The same well you can try it when there are students of the same language level in a group and when their levels are different.

Sometimes when the students are very close friends and very emotional persons at that, their working in one team can result in a very noisy atmosphere and a little bit of a chaos about the way they are working and interfering with the others'.
So, psychology matters!

YOU FEEDBACK IS ALWAYS WELCOME!!

TBL and PBL
Task-based learning and Project-based learning

Here is a very good and educative article which clearly shows the differentces and benefits and possible difficulties:
https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/tbl-pbl-two-learner-centred-approaches?page=2#comment-206204

First about TBL 
From my experience I can say that TBL is an approach which you cannot simply avoid if you want to make your classroom student-developing and interesting both for your students and yourself. How do I use it?
First, I use it at that stage of working in class when my students already learnt basic vocabulary (and grammar) material and more complicated tasks for developing critical thinking, etc can be introduced.
Then, it can as well be used with beginner students but as their languagebasis is still limited you should be a bit more careful in selecting problems envisioning how students can deal with them with the vocabulary and grammar knoewedge they have.
As an example, you can find an interesting text related to the topic your students are studying at the moment and use TBL working with this text.
One of the techniques is using Fishbone: Fish head is result, fishbones are causes.

This cause-effect activity helps students:
- to work through every detail in the text
- to apply their critical thinking abilities in processing and organizing information related to the problem
- to make a many-sided analysis of the problem
- to make a schematic representation of the problem which is easily stored in mind and, well, it is usefull this way for the exam-preparation process when  you can easily remember what you can and should talk about in case you have to talk about this problem
- to understand what you personally think about it.
.....
How to use it

Fish head - students word the problem raised in the text, the way they see it,
Fish bones - students word the issues mentioned in the text (the most important facts) that "bulid" this problem.
Divide the students into Groups and each group should come with its Fichbone scheme after the discussion.

But let's talk about Group worki n the next post!
YOUR FEEDBACK IS ALWAYS WELCOME!!:):)