A Moment Of Thought About Our Group Presentation

With three days of nonstop discussions and preparation, we finally worked out the presentation which is the fruit for our hard work. In our opinion, it has many positive points regarding the presenters, objectives and actitivties. However, some follow-up improvements may make it better.

To start with, we are very happy together as a group. Each part of the presentation is appointed to a certain presenters but this does not mean that he/she works individually. We always share ideas and make recommendations to our rehearsal before actually presenting it. All of us are proud of our loud, clear voices, our English proficiency and confidence in public speaking. We have found out that many minds will make a good job.

As a group, we think that the objectives we set are very specific and easy to attain. We try to help the students with very concrete skills and guide them step by step. We do not impose workload on students so that they can have time to digest what they have learnt and achieve our intended purposes.

The activities are also suitable to students’ levels and also stimulate their interest. Actually, when we designed the activities, we always take into account interaction among students. They are communication-oriented, and therefore, can engage students into the lessons. Through pair work and group work, we help students to develop the collaborative spirit.

We felt that Martar’s recommendation of putting the reading text on the webpage very visually and spatially logical. This must be a great improvement to our final project.

Gennerally, we are really delighted with the fruit we have harvested and hopefully things will go well.

Hot Potatoes - They are really HOT!!!

Technology is a marvelous aid that facilitates language teaching and learning in a number of ways. Technological applications in the TESOL world have benefited teachers and students in making the classroom more realistic and the materials more authentic. Visual and audio effects, to a great extent, boost students’ interest in the lesson and enhance the teaching and learning outcomes. In our opinion, the TILT course is not only practical in its essence but also serves as a springboard against which English teachers can make further progress in their career and exploit technology to the full.

What we feel particularly interested is the Hot Potatoes software. It enables teachers to design numerous activities suitable for students of all ages and levels. According to students’ needs, teachers can tailor the activities with different programs such as JCross, JCloze, JMatch, JQuiz and Jmix. Each program has its our functions which help teachers vary the activities. In this way, they engage students in the lessons and take an active role in the learning process. Through JCross, teachers can create exciting games, enliven the classroom atmosphere and encourage interaction. Students will feel themselves more involved in the activities when they discuss with their partners to work out the answers. Take JMix, for another example. Among the jungle of words, they calculate and build correct sentences. In order to do this, students are expected to make use of their previous knowledge of vocabulary and sentence structures. This kind of activities helps them to apply what they have learned in a practical way. For activities which require comparison between options to choose the best ones, JQuiz, which is designed for multiple choice questions, may come in handy. Not less necessary are JCloze and JMatch for gap-filling and matching activities respectively. JCloze helps teachers to check learners’ understanding of the whole text so as to choose the most appropriate words or vocabulary items for each blank. With JMatch, students can be exposed to either texts or pictures which are quite motivating. Sentence matching may be rather demanding on the part of te learners since they have to take into account both meaning and grammar.On the whole, Hot Potatoes proves to be really effective software for language teaching and learning.