Using Technology to Learn and Teach Writing Skills

Hi everyooooooooooooone! 

Today I want to introduce you two wonderful ways to teach and develop Writing Skills. Writing is considerer the most difficult for the L2 learners. So, is important look for different strategies to teach this skill and also, that students could feel able to develop their knowledge related to writing. 

  

 One of them is TitanPad. TitanPad is a website which offers the opportunity to create a collaborative writing in just one document. 

This is a great opportunity, as you can see in the image, you can invite to everybody to write a collaborative writing and create stories, essays, letters, etc. 

TitanPad is a great opportunity to creat collaborative teamwork between students and I will use it with high school students because they have more access to technology and they should have more English language knowledge. However, the collaborative writing allows you, as teacher, create a diverse group with four or five students and this group can be compused by a student who has good grammar, other who is good in creativity, other who is good punctuation and other one who can be good in coherence.

Task Based Language Learning would go very well with this website because a teacher can give to the students interesting task to do in the class and the students will able to do at time and they can include the teacher in the platform and receive instant feedback. 

Limitations: One of the possible limatations is that this platform can use to write task not related to the class as the example that we saw in classes the last monday and other limitation is that could happen is the non - collaborative writing and that one student writes all the task. 

By Vanessa Martínez :)

Practing Reading with News

HI EVERYONE! 

Today is the turn of write about Reading skill and sometimes practice Reading with students is a little bit complicated  and is well known that some students hate read in their native language and they feel less desire to read in a language. 

However, there are some websites and pages that can help us to arouse the interest for reading in English and this is so important because reading contributes that a student could receive direct input. 

⥢ News in Levels is website that offers news around the world and are super easy to read and understand.

And as you can see, this website has different levels  

Using authentic materials can be easier and more dynamic for the students to do reading activities and this website can be use with the traditional "Grammar Translation Method" and "Lexical Approach" because both methods are focus on grammar and the vocabulary acquisition and as it was mentioned the Reading skill is the most important because contributes to the L2 acquisition in a direct form.

One of the possible limitations is that if a student has difficulties to read in Spanish it will be more difficult to read in English and possibly, and the student will not realize the activity. 

Learn Languages with Music Videos!

Hello,it's me again!

Hi everyone! This week I'm going to talk about a wonderful website which is "Learn Languages with Music Videos,Lyrics and Karaoke!" 

First of all, I really love this website because is very fun and easy to understand and use. One of the advantage is that there are different levels for every person, so everybody can use it! Even though a person who don't have much knowledge of English Language. Thus, this website results easy to use and in my opinion, listening a song can be a huge difference between other types of listening, because if we use a song we can catch the attention of the students easier, we can use songs that they like, others that have rhythm, also use songs is more interactive than the normal listenings.

This website can be a good contribution to "The Silent Way" method because this method is related to self - learning and the students are able to use this tool whenever they want.

Sadly, there is one limitation and is, that sometimes,students can feel frustrated if they don't recognize a word or if they fail to write them properly.

How ELT Blogs can help us :D

Hello there! 

For this blog review, I will talk you about an amazing ELT (English Language Teaching) blog that I found and which left me open-mouthed, ok. So, the blog that I chose is:

"Oxford University Press: Global English Language Teaching Blog"

This blog was created for this university and I really love it! Maybe because I think that Oxford is so good and also, has a lot of material which is good for everyone who wants to learn English language. 

Plus, I like the fact that this blog has connection with different social networks, I think  is a benefit, because people can have more connection with this blog and also, the blog can be known better. So, in that way more people can learn and improve their English langauge skills.


Feautures: There is 60 blogs author and all them are teachers. Some of them taught in countries such as India and Italy, which is amazing. Teachers also have different magisters and doctoral programs which help the development of this blog and meet the needs of those who want to learn English language. They say the following: "This blog is intended for teachers, trainers, lecturers, authors and anyone else with an interest in keeping up with what’s happening in the world of ELT and what we’re up to." I like this, because, as I said before, this blog is able to everyone who are interesting on learn a little bit more about ELT and of course, is very useful for us, as future English Teachers.

Design: I like the design. It is well organized and is easy to find what you want to find on the blog. It is also easy to read, letters are not small and have images which helps to complement the information. 


Limitations: There is not big limitations, on my point of view. Maybe, if you don't like to read, you will find it boring because most of the material are readings. 

Target: This blog is amazing and is very helpful for teachers, pre-service tearchers, students, etc. One of the things that our teachers told us at university, is that as teachers, we should never stop studying. This blog is perfect to learn everyday something new.


GO AND VISIT THEIR BLOG --> CLICK HERE!!! 

Kahoooooooooooooooooooooot!

Kahoot! What is Kakoot? Kahoot is a platform in which you can create a kind of questionnaire but is characterised for being a game. The participants, in this case the students are the participants, have to go to this website -> kahoot.it and then, they have to enter a PIN, this PIN is given by the professor or the owner of the questionnaire created. 

This particular tool can be useful for language learning because can help to make more dynamic and interesting classes for the students. Thus, Kahoot! can be useful because in nowadays, students are technology's dependent. According to Vera Katyshev, Kahoot! does the teaching/learning process more efficient and productive because a student can receive instant feedback and is a tool that allows create classroom community because students can work in teams. 

This tool I will use it in any school context because you are able to adapt it to the needs of your students. This platform could be an excellent form to teach Vocabulary or maybe, do a review of what you had taught before. Furthermore, Kahoot is a game and this is part of "Gamification" and as Figueroa (2015) mentioned in his research, the main objective of Gamification is to increase the participation of the students within educative context.

Limitations: Reflecting on the possible limitations, I found that Kahoot games can create dispute between students because as it was mentioned before, Kahoot is a competitive game. 

I invited you to look for this platform and use it with your students! Click here to discover a little more about Kahoot!

By Vanessa Martínez :)