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In reality, what most teachers and students seem to lose sight of is the fact that ‘knowledge of the grammatical system of a language [grammatical competence] has to be complemented by understanding (sic) of culture-specific meanings [communicative or rather cultural competence]’ (Byram, Morgan et al., 1994: 4).

Culture in language learning is not an expendable fifth skill, tacked on, so to speak, to the teaching of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. It is always in the background, right from day one, ready to unsettle the good language learners when they expect it least, making evident the limitations of their hard-won communicative competence, challenging their ability to make sense of the world around them. (Kramsch, 1993: 1)

According to them, the teaching of culture has the following goals and is of and in itself a means of accomplishing them: To help students to develop an understanding of the fact that all people exhibit culturally-conditioned behaviours. To help students to develop an understanding that social variables such as age, sex, social class, and place of residence influence the ways in which people speak and behave. To help students to become more aware of conventional behaviour in common situations in the target culture. To help students to increase their awareness of the cultural connotations of words and phrases in the target language. To help students to develop the ability to evaluate and refine generalizations about the target culture, in terms of supporting evidence. To help students to develop the necessary skills to locate and organize information about the target culture. To stimulate students’ intellectual curiosity about the target culture, and to encourage empathy towards its people.

This action research study explored the change in face-to-face teaching practices as a result of faculty professional development for online teaching. Faculty’s initial teaching model is typically born from that of their own teachers, and they teach as they were taught. However, few have any online experience as a student or a teacher. Learning to teach online may be a catalyst for faculty to reflect on and evaluate their current teaching practices.

The results of the study indicated that learning to teach online has the potential to transform faculty’s assumptions and beliefs about teaching, changing their face-to-face teaching practices.

The Enrichment Triad Model was designed to encourage creative productivity on the part of young people by exposing them to various topics, areas of interest, and fields of study, and to further train them to apply advanced content, process-training skills, and methodology training to self-selected areas of interest. Accordingly, three types of enrichment are included in the Triad Model (see Fig. 2). Type I enrichment is designed to expose students to a wide variety of disciplines, topics, occupations, hobbies, persons, places, and events that would not ordinarily be covered in the regular curriculum. In schools - that use this model, an enrichment team consisting of parents, teachers, and students often organizes and plans Type I experiences by contacting speakers, arranging minicourses, demonstrations, or performances, or by ordering and distributing films, slides, videotapes, or other print or non-print media. Figure 2. The enrichment triad model. [Click on the figure to see it as a PDF file.] Type II enrichment consists of materials and methods designed to promote the development of thinking and feeling processes. Some Type II training is general, and is usually carried out both in classrooms and in enrichment programs. Training activities include the development of. (1) creative thinking and problem solving, critical thinking, and affective processes; (2) a wide variety of specific learning how-to-learn skills; (3) skills in the appropriate use of advanced-level reference materials; and (4) written, oral, and visual communication skills. Other Type II enrichment is specific, as it cannot be planned in advance and usually involves advanced methodological instruction in an interest area selected by the student. For example, students who become interested in botany after a Type I experience might pursue additional training in this area by doing advanced reading in botany; compiling, planning and carrying out plant experiments; and seeking more advanced methods training if they want to go further. Type III enrichment involves students who become interested in pursuing a self-selected area and are willing to commit the time necessary for advanced content acquisition and process training in which they assume the role of a first-hand inquirer. The goals of Type III enrichment include: providing opportunities for applying interests, knowledge, creative ideas and task commitment to a self-selected problem or area of study, acquiring advanced level understanding of the knowledge (content) and methodology (process) that are used within particular disciplines, artistic areas of expression and interdisciplinary studies, developing authentic products that are primarily directed toward bringing about a desired impact upon a specified audience, developing self-directed learning skills in the areas of planning, organization, resource utilization, time management, decision making and self-evaluation, developing task commitment, self-confidence, and feelings of creative accomplishment.

is needed is an approach that helps teachers learn how to choose, apply, evaluate and further develop different configurations of tools and artifacts - digital and otherwise - depending on their practice, their learners, the contexts they are in, and the nature of the subject they teach. If this sounds like teaching our teachers how to fish, it is. They should not be given a prescribed technology or the proverbial fish; instead, they must learn how to fish, or specifically to think through, critically choose or design and configure, learn and apply technologies that will best meet the teaching and learning needs that exist within their context. If this can be done, teachers can go beyond thinking of themselves as merely being passive consumers of technological tools and begin thinking of themselves as being designers or purposeful users of technology specifically to aid students' learning.

Koehler and Mishra (2007) explained that good teaching with technology for a given content is complex and multidimensional. It requires a nuanced understanding of how a combination of certain technologies and pedagogical technique can make learning of a particular content area more meaningful.

Key design considerations for creating activities and conditions tofacilitate socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation

There are several factors that affect learning transfer. These include whether students understand or simply memorize knowledge, the amount of time spent on learning the task, the amount of deliberate practice that is done beyond learning the task, the motivation of the student, how the problem is represented, the transfer conditions, and the metacognition of the solver (Dweck, 1989; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Johnson et al., 2011; Palinscar & Brown, 1984; Singley & Anderson, 1989).

A student’s comprehension of a problem and his or her ultimate ability to transfer concepts learned previously to the current problem is inextricably linked to his or her ability to properly represent the problem.

ognitive research shows that the organization of learning and how new learning relates to what a student already knows are the strongest predictors of how well a student will transfer knowledge (National Research Council, 2000). Schunn and Silk (2011) articulated, however, that in science and engineering students often “lack relevant conceptual frameworks or have frameworks that are not developed enough to support new learning adequately” (p. 9). The absence of such frameworks makes it difficult for students to connect and apply other knowledge where relevant.

Drama puts the teacher in the role of supporter in the learning process and the students can take more responsibility for their own learning.  Ideally, the teacher will take a less dominant role in the language class and let the students explore the language activities.  In the student centered classroom, every student is a potential teacher for the group.

Students are encouraged to express their own ideas and contribute to the whole

ts taught in schools across the United States with little or no parental or educational oversight. Pearson standardized exams will assess how well teachers implement Pearson instruction modules and Pearson's common core standards, but not what students really learn or whether students are actually learning things that are important to know. Pearson is already creating teacher certification exams for eighteen states including New York, organizing staff development workshops to promote Pearson products, and providing school district Pearson assessment tools. In New York, Pearson Education currently has a five-year, $32 million contract to administer state test and provides other "testing services" to the State Education Department. It also recently received a share of a federal Race to the Top grant to create what the company calls the "next-generation" of online assessments.

Our language can lift students to their highest potential or tear them down

Such words support Don's budding identity a

tives here give me a wonderful sense of how your character looks and feels." Na

negotiable contracting and his research shows that students who are given a role in the assessment process and provided with the appropriate direction by their teachers are able to accurately evaluate their strengths and weaknesses and better pinpoint areas where they need to focus their efforts for improvement

develop a clearer picture of the task and their teacher's expectations while the teachers reported that they had clearer instructional goals

As a result, students typically perform at higher levels and gradually come to view assessment not as an arbitrary form of reward or humiliation, but rather as a positive tool for educational enrichment and growth.

Wikipedia and other social networking sites provide a space or platform upon which all kinds of activities can flourish, with the idea of a platform transcending any particular technology or application and referring to either virtual or physical worlds. Collaboration among many users upon such a platform often produces unplanned and emergent

results—results frequently unattainable in a command-and-control management setting

the logic of commons-based peer production, and the logic of platform management transform the idea of the university and the very activities—teaching and learning, research, and publishing—that lie at the heart of this enterprise