I was fortunate enough to have moderated a few Avenue webinars on Poodll technologies in June. The webinar speaker was Justin Hunt, the founder and CEO of Poodll. I have since been developing learning experiences for the CanAvenue.ca project using Poodll technologies and would like to share some of the basics with the TESL Ontario community through this blog post and a TESL Ontario webinar.
One of the main challenges that ESL students face both in language learning in general and in listening skills specifically, is how to improve! Often, not surprisingly, one of the teachers’ frustrating questions is how to help their students overcome their difficulties. In fact, they should both know that if they place their focus on the listening process, they can improve listening skills, and achieve successful comprehension. In this blog post, I’d like to highlight the problems that students deal with in this process, and how we can better assist them as teachers.
The main problems students may face on the path of listening while improving their listening skills are fear and their teachers! Yes, you’ve heard me right! The problems that teachers create for students are choosing topics that students have no idea about, materials that are too advanced for their level, or a lack of proper preparation for the listening activities. Students consciously or subconsciously are afraid of missing words or not answering the teacher’s questions correctly and therefore end up embarrassing themselves. And the sad truth is that they’re often correct as the follow-up activities reveal that they fail to get the task done correctly.
Students have their own fair part in this scenario. When there’s an insufficient amount of shared cultural and linguistic knowledge, listening comprehension becomes too difficult. In fact, it’s not necessary for speakers and listeners to share identical backgrounds, but listeners must have enough knowledge to allow for the re-creation of the speaker’s message. Moreover, sometimes students don’t have enough vocabulary to help with comprehension through inferencing and guessing.
To solve the listening comprehension problem, teachers should be mindful of the importance of the listening process. Here are some tips and tricks to assist our students better.
In short, on this journey of improving listening comprehension, learners can enhance their skills through patience, effort, insight, new strategies, and guided practice.
Session after session, I integrate a “word of the day” into my lessons for students to add to their notebooks. I explain what the word means, provide examples of its use, and task them with using it that day. But I recently wondered whether it would be better to teach a “lexical chunk of the day” instead, as they tend to have a greater impact than isolated words. Also, students gravitate to these fixed expressions and are always asking what they mean. Indeed, well-known language educator Scott Thornbury supports this approach in Chunk-Spotting–A User’s Guide: “the possession of a memorized store of chunks allows more rapid processing, not only for production but also for reception. It’s quicker to process several words at a time rather than each word individually.”
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Technology is so embedded in our daily lives that we hardly notice, even take for granted, that we can’t get through our day without our phones, the internet, automated check-outs, Zoom. Yet, when it comes to using computers in the classroom, most teachers are reactionary in their response.
The school where I work will be using Avenue as the main delivery platform for all levels starting in September. This decision, when it was announced last year, did not, and indeed, has not, gone over well with the teachers, to put it mildly.
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Teaching is a rewarding profession, but it does come with its challenges. One important aspect of teaching is to establish a rapport with the learners. A teacher who is unable to communicate with her learners in the first few days is at risk of “losing” her class altogether. Research shows that learners learn better when they find the content interesting and like the teacher! In fact, a positive and favourable learning environment is necessary for effective communication in a classroom that learners find safe and supportive. This article will pose some challenges and offer solutions that will ensure student engagement.
Let’s face it, teaching in an online learning environment can be difficult when it comes to engaging and
motivating learners. This non-traditional learning environment poses an additional challenge to ensure learners are constructing meaning from the content and deepening their learning and understanding.
Educators often struggle to help learners make meaningful connections to the content while deepening their understanding within an online learning environment. For this reason, I want to emphasize the benefits of discussion boards in online learning. Discussion boards can be defined as virtual platforms where learners can interact with their instructor and peers by posting and responding to discussion posts. This type of interaction and knowledge building foster a sense of community among students while promoting active learning within an online learning environment.
Discussion boards offer a range of benefits for learners:
Some learners may experience feelings of isolation from the course content, their peers, and their instructor within the online learning environment. These feelings of isolation and disconnect can further hinder their motivation and potential academic success. However, discussion boards within an online learning environment can cultivate a social presence among learners by offering additional opportunities to interact with peers and the instructor. Fostering this sense of community and social presence increases feelings of support and engagement which can further contribute to academic success and motivate learners to continue their education.
Overall, discussion board is a constructivist tool which helps learners construct meaning and make a deeper connection to class content. I find that discussion boards are largely beneficial for the online learning environment as they help learners build on each other’s knowledge while reducing feelings of isolation, deepening their understanding, and broadening their own perspectives. Discussion boards are essential to contribute to learners’ academic success within an online learning environment.
References
Li C. (2022). English Research Learning and Functional Research Based on Constructivism Theory and Few-Shot Learning. Computational intelligence and neuroscience, 2022, 3698802. https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/3698802
Mazlan, A. F., Mohammad, M., Kassim, R., & Erni. (2022). Online Teaching and Learning During Covid-19 Pandemic: Challenges Faced by English Teachers in Islamic Tertiary Institutions in Malaysia and Indonesia. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 12(10), 2005–2013. https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1210.07
Wang, Y., Chen, Y., & Anderson, T. (2020). Exploring the effectiveness of online discussion boards in higher education: A systematic review. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 58(4), 419-433.
If when reading the title, the first word that came to mind was “Relax,” you are lukewarm. Collocation wise, you are correct. However, as a teacher, I am referring to “Reflect” — as in Time to Reflect. Don’t get me wrong; teachers need time to relax, and I have been doing some of that during my summer break from teaching, but as teachers, we also need time to recharge for when classes restart. That is where reflection comes in.
Continue readingThe concept of language ego is intriguing.
People usually discuss ego in psychological terms. In linguistics, however, language ego is seen as a normal and natural byproduct of learning a second language, which has everything to do with the affective part of language learning.
Hands down, foundation literacy is the most challenging level to teach in language instruction. In fact, it’s a completely different universe from the other CLB levels, even CLB 1. If you’ve ever taught a literacy class, along with a CLB 1 class, as I did this year, you’ll see how dramatic the differences are between the students. A teacher sees that the approaches, strategies, and pedagogy they use for the other levels don’t apply to a literacy class. With that in mind, here are four hard-earned principles I learned from my past year teaching literacy.
Continue readingKiara Kim, Learning and Development Assistant, TESL Ontario
As we prepare for the TESL Ontario 2024 Annual Conference: Navigating New Routes in Language Education, it’s time to spotlight the leaders who are making a significant impact in the TESL community. One shining example is Gonul Turkdogan, the 2023 recipient of the Sparks of Excellence Award. Gonul’s journey since receiving this prestigious award offers a glimpse into the profound impact and inspiration these accolades can bring.
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