Blog #7 Writing Correction/Feedback

I thought the Savignon and Chiu article had a lot of good ideas. Most of them could be done with paper as well as online, but were beneficial either way. One idea I thought was particularly helpful and specific to online was the idea of having the students change the highlighted portion to a different color. I know when I was learning a foreign language I would only correct about 95% of the revisions. There were always some that I left, usually because I didn't understand and didn't want to put the effort into figuring it out. I know this sounds slack, but I don't think it's totally uncommon. If I would have had to turn in the next draft with a visual representation pointing to the areas I didn't revise, I would have worked harder to fix everything. As far as which to revise first, form or content, I do think it makes the most sense to focus on content first. In addition to the evidence showing that students do more revisions when content is focused on first, there is also just the practical side of it. If you have a student fix all their content first and then look at their grammar, they only have to revise each portion once. If you have them fix their grammar mistakes though, they are only going to have new ones after they've revised their content. I feel like they would end up doing grammar, and then content, and then grammar again.

Blog #6 Restaurant Podcast

Restaurant Lingo For Beginners

This podcast is designed for mid-level beginning ESL students. It focuses on vocabulary and questions commonly used in restaurants.

How to listen:
Before listening, review the following vocab list:


Appetizer- a small sized meal you eat before your main meal.

Side- small amount of food you eat with the main meal

Dessert- a sweet food you eat after your main meal

Specials- meals on sale

Bill- amount of money you owe for your meal

Server- man or woman who asks what you want and brings your food



A Few Common Questions

What do you have to drink?

Do you have any specials today?



Next listen to the podcast.


http://blschmid.podbean.com/


Now it's your turn! After listening, choose a restaurant and try out your new vocabulary.
Blog about your experience.

Blog #5 Voicethread

I think voice thread is a nice idea and something I could see myself using in the classroom. I think it can increase the students' uptake. One way is if the teacher posts the first comment using L+1 language. This way, the students will have to listen many times and hopefully look up a few words up in order to respond appropriately. There could even be comprehension questions coupled with the listening assignment. When it's the students' turn to respond, I would let them work in partners for their first one. This way, they could figure out the logistics together and would not have all of the responsibility, which would hopefully reduce output anxiety.



After the first run through, when it's time for the students to post the initial thread, I would make it like a contest, so they would experiment with the language. I would let them work in partners and challenge them to use language that their classmates will have to look up. I would not use it as an accuracy lesson or a pronunciation lesson. I would have them focus on fluency and using new vocabulary.

Blog #4 Italian and ESL podcasts

I listened to an Italian lesson, but I wasn't very impressed. First of all, most of the podcast was in English and the first two minutes and the last two minutes were spent more on advertising for their other products than it was on teaching Italian. The actual lesson was on the ten most common verbs in Italian. The speaker would explain what the verb meant and then give two example sentences. Sometimes the sentences were in the past, sometimes the present and he also switched from first, second and third person. This made everything a little more confusing. I think it would have been a better idea to focus in on a few verbs and gone through the conjugations more thoroughly. Overall, it wasn't great.

http://www.learnitalianpod.com/

For the English lesson, I listened to a podcast off of ESL pod. It was number 227. The nice thing about this podcast is that whenever the speaker came across a difficult word, he would stop and explain it and give other examples. Also, it was about vampires, which at the moment, might be a common topic since many vampire movies and books have recently came out. The bad side of this podcast is that it was 25 minutes long. That's way too long to keep my interest and I'll admit now I didn't listen to the whole thing. Also, he used some slang that I think is outdated, such as "get a life." I'm pretty sure I haven't heard that since junior high. Overall, I think this podcast was only OK, its length being its major downside.


http://www.eslpod.com/website/show_all.php#