Reflection on Week 10

Tandem project is not an easy task to be completed. It is because it involves learners' autonomy.

Hong Kong also promotes learners' autonomy in their learning. In fact, it is not easy to control the process and outcome. The fact is that, students are individuals and they have different interest. Therefore, it is not easy to fit everyone's interest and hope in real situation. In addition, as my students are young, they are unable to manage their works well by themselves.

In the tandem project, students are work in pairs with different L1 and they are planning to learn from each other. I do believe that it is not suitable for young learners because it involves their autonomy. As the writer mentioned, tandem learners are compelled to commuicate with their partners. No one would like to force to do something that they do not like. Therefore, students will loose their interest in being the tandem partners.

I do think the project can be tried in universities. If some students are interested in learning a thrid language, such as French. He/ She will have the needs to learn with a French students. Of course, the French students would like to learn Chinese at the same time!

Reflection on Week 9

This article mentions some criteria for teachers to use CALL materials in teaching. All these criteria are very important for teachers to choose suitable materials for their students.

My students lack of interest in learning English. It is because they come from China and they lack of confident in using it. In fact, they are more concentrated when I use the i-books and i-readers in the lessons. Those materials are published by the publishers and they match the textbooks and the readers that the students are using. Therefore, the students are more interested in the lessons when I use the i-books or i-readers. On the other hand, there are some interactive games or exercises in the i-books. Students can catch up the sentence patterns easily through playing the games or doing the exercises and the learning atmosphere is created by doing them.

I really appreciate the invention of the i-books and i-readers. It is because they are very convenient for teachers and beneficent for students.

Reflection on Week 8

Although we all familiar with the topic about copyright, it is my first time to read this ordinance.

In fact, schools in Hong Kong concern about this issue once it has been published. It is because teachers always use the mass media, such as newspaper articles and advertisements, as a kind of teaching tools in their lessons. As our government suggests, teachers should use authentic materials as teaching aids to arouse our students’ interest. It is true that such materials can motivate our students to learn.

I am quite surprised the term ‘currently shown movie’ in the ordinance. In fact, teachers do not use the video piracy as a teaching tool because we all know that it is illegal. Therefore, how can we use the currently shown movies as teaching aids?

Reflection on Week 6

CALL materials are very useful in for teaching and learning. In fact, some of the materials do not fulfill the needs of the students or even for teachers. Some of them are designed based on some particular theories and some of them are just the way

Some of the CALL materials that we are using are not really suitable for our students. It is because they are designed in English speaking counties. It is impossible for our students to accept the slangs or style in speaking of other countries. The main reason is that our cultures are totally different from each other. Although teachers in Hong Kong can create the CALL materials by themselves which should suit their students’ needs. However, teachers are not the professionalists for designing CALL materials. They lack of the knowledge or they do not have time to do it. Therefore, I really hope that the manufactures can design some suitable CALL materials which are based on the culture of Hong Kong and our students’ needs.

Reflection for Week 5

I do agree that students feel much relax to communicate with others by using the computers. In fact, many students hesitant to talk with friends or answer questions in English face to face. The reason is they afraid of making mistakes by using English. However, grammar is not compulsory rule that people concern when communicating with others by using computers. Therefore, when the students use English through computers to communicate with others, they do not need to concern the grammar. Therefore, they can freely to express themselves. It is an advantage to encourage students to use English.

However, there are some limitions when we apply it in our daily teaching. Self-discipline is one of the constrains. It is not easy for young learners to use computers only for doing the school projects. They may brouse other things and talk to each other out of the topics of the projects. In addition, the language ability of them may be affected by communicating with others through computers. It is becasue they do not concern grammar when talking to their friends. In this case, the students cannot raise their language ability and they cannot build up their confidence in using English when communicating with others face to face.

Reflection on Week 3

It is good to treat English as a tool rather than a language. The projects encourage students use English to make webpage, send emails, research and so on. They have to use English to communicate with others, look for information and prepare their own material. They acquire English from the process.

Students’ work will be published on the web which motivate the kids do their work in a purposeful way. In the past, their ideas might only be seen by their teachers, parents or friends. Now, their work will be showed in public area. Also, they can exchange their ideas through email exchange programs. That’s a great opportunity of using English in a realistic situation.

However, we have to consider the amount of English they used during the activities. The kids may just use their first language to communicate with their classmates outside the computer world. They just use keyboard to translate their work.

At the same time, some of the kids may spend time on playing games on the NET. It is difficult to monitor them in the virtual area. They always claim that they are doing projects. This is the major reason of time consuming when doing project in an electronic way.

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Dear all,

Hi! This is my blog. Please feel free to comment it~

Rosanna