Excellent website for ESL teaching & Learning: Khan Academy

http://www.khanacademy.org/
There are tons of classes delivered in Ahan Academy. These classes cover various topics, such as science, arts, history and etc. Undoubtedly, Ahan Academy is an excellent website for ESL teaching & learning, especially for content-based teaching.

I remember that when I prepared for TOEFL three years ago, one big problem I faced was that I couldn't find enough academic lectures in English. Every TOEFL taker knows that there are many academic-related articles in the test. For students who are studying in an non-English speaking country, understanding English lectures in an academic setting will be really challenging. If students can make use of Ahan Academy, they can have access to a lot of lectures. There is no doubt that students will benefit a lot from materials in Ahan Academy.

Also, for ESL teachers, they are usually tortured by the fact that students lack motivation in ESL class since they just take it as a language class. Plus, many ESL textbooks are out-of-date and focus on language itself, which cannot help to stimulate students' interests and motivation. However, things can be changed by the existence of Ahan Academy. With the help of Ahan Acedemy, ESL teachers can relate what is taught in ESL classes to contents of students' regular classes. As a result, ESL classes are not only language classes anymore, they can help students to review and obtain a deeper understanding of what they've learned in other classes. I spent some time studying a history class about French Revolution myself, which was very interesting. I just felt I was sitting in front of a blackboard in class, and important points even popped out on the blackboard when the teacher was lecturing. Moreover, the lecture was delivered clearly and the lecturer was humorous. In a word, I really enjoyed having a lesson at Ahan Academy.

For ESL teachers in an non-English speaking country, they can select a lecture in English after students learned relevant contents in their first language. For ESL teachers in an English speaking country, they can still use materials in Ahan Academy, since different teachers have different teaching styles and ways to analyze. ESL students, no matter where they are, can benefit a lot from learning stuff in Ahan Academy.

Experience with VOA special English

In the technology class, the website of VOA special English program was introduced to aid ESL teachings. I have tried the website out, and here I would like to share my experiences with everyone that is interested. 

Firstly, the topics on the website are updated frequently enough, such that ESL teachers can help students learn English better with the benefit of their attention to the hottest news and topics. Only a few days after the pass of Whitney Houston, the topic of 'Remembering Whitney Houston' is already part of the website. I am sure that students that were fans of Whitney Houston will be strongly motivated on the topic. 

Secondly, for each topic, the website rates the materials as 'Beginner', 'Intermediate', and 'Advanced', in terms of difficulty level; therefore ESL teachers can easily pick materials that are most appropriate for their students' levels. 

Thirdly, the website provides interactive materials that students can learn about the topics and practice English from many aspects, including vocabulary, reading (summarizing main idea), and listening. As can be seen from the following example of the topic of 'Remembering Steve Jobs'. In addition to this, ESL teachers may give students additional assignments, such as writing a composition or giving a presentation on the topic. If so, students can improve their English level from all aspects: reading, listening, writing and speaking. 

In summary, the website of VOA special English provides a fantastic platform and amazing help for ESL teachers. Thereby, I would like to strongly recommend this website to any ESL teachers. 

Experience of using Xtimeline

The usefulness of the tools introduced in the technology class in ESL teaching has been proven. What I want to test out is the usefulness of these instruments in Mandarin Chinese teaching and learning. 

For example, Rbook is an effective tool for teachers to create their own big books to teach, but I just found out that it does not accept any other language except English.  As a Chinese teacher, I cannot add any Chinese character to the pictures I selected in Rbook. It's fine to use Rbook to teach young children since they do not need to learn reading and writing of Mandarin Chinese. However, for students who need to learn reading and writing, usefulness of Rbook falls into question because it can present pictures only.

The good news is that Xtimeline is also appropriate for foreign language teaching. It can show Chinese perfectly. I designed my own timeline and shared it with my intermediate students. They liked it so much. For the homework this week, I asked them to create their own timeline by using Xtimeline. All of them were excited to do that. I felt that Xtimelime really works well in foreign language teaching. I will highly recommend it to other language teachers.

Peizhu's favorite authoring tools

In last class, teachers introduced to us various authoring tools, among which, Hot Potatoes, Xtimelime and BookR are my favorite ones.

When I was in middle school and high school, I did countless Cloze practice. I feel that Cloze practice is very useful for students to improve listening skill and grasp grammar points, such as the use of preposition and articles. designing Cloze practice seems very easy,however, it will actually take teacher's much time given the possibility that every teacher usually has different classes. Hot Potatoes enables teachers to design Cloze practice within a really short time.

Xtimeline is anther interesting instrument I would like use in my classes in the future. At the beginning of a new semester with a new group of students, asking them to draw a timeline about their growth and education and describe it is a very good way to get to know them and build a good start of a nice relationship of teachers and students. With the help of Xtimeline, designing time lines will be an activity with a lot of fun. Also, students can use it to introduce themselves to the whole class.

The last one is BookR. I love it so much as a teacher who likes to teach kids but not good at drawing. With the help of BookR, I can make many beautiful big books to teach kids. Also, I can have students create their own big books and share them with classmates.

I like these tools very much and I believe they can definitely have good influences on my teaching and students' learning.

Lesson Writer

Our teachers introduced to us an amazing instrument which can help English and ESL teachers prepare classes effectively and easily. What teachers need to do is to copy and paste a short article. A couple seconds after clicking “continue”, the system will automatically display important vocabulary, grammar points and sentence structures and detailed explanations for each. Teachers only need to check boxes to select vocabulary, grammar and structures they want to include in that lesson. I am so surprised by the “finished product” at the end. It is entirely a perfect handout for students. The “finished product” does not only contain the language points teachers want to teach, but also include vocabulary, grammar and writing practice. Recalling my experience of student teaching last semester, my CT and I usually felt overwhelmed because we had five different classes in total and the process of preparing lesson was really time-consuming. However, with the help of Lesson Writer, the whole process only took me less than five minutes. Sometimes teachers really want to share some up-to-date articles with students, but it will take much time to connect these articles to language points students need to master. As a result, teachers can only stick to the textbooks. Lesson Writer enables teachers to share up-to-date articles with students. At the meanwhile; these articles will be closely connected with what they learned from textbooks.I feel it will be better if Lesson Writer can provide different languages so that foreign language teachers can also benefit from it.