Group items tagged

"This study aims at investigating the efficiency of web quests in enhancing the 8th graders' descriptive writing. The 8th graders in the Lebanese public schools in general usually demonstrate poor writing skills. Consequently, they don't show motivation to write in English. The subjects of the study are one control group (n=22) and one experimental group (n=23) enrolled in grade eight in a public school in Beirut and whose ages range from thirteen to fifteen years old. The purpose of the study is to examine whether or not the web quest helps 8th graders achieve unity and coherence in writing descriptive paragraphs and to examine if the motivation towards writing is increased after using the web quest. Based on a pilot study conducted earlier by the two researchers, the prospective findings of the study shall convey that the experimental group produces unified and coherent writings. More importantly, the experimental group is expected to reveal great motivation towards writing. The researchers' prospective recommendations will be mainly urging the teachers of all levels to use the web quests as an indispensable tool requested to enhance students' motivation and to better their descriptive writing skills."

If you want to write an awesome descriptive essay, the worst thing you could do is get straight to the writing process. This is not an easy assignment to undertake; you need to go through a lot of planning and research before you can settle for a topic and tackle it from a unique perspective.

"Watch interesting, authentic videos. Learn the vocabulary that matters to you. Speak and get instant pronunciation feedback." Stills from videos with descriptive voice over, or clips, with captioning. Record your own voice and get a score. Users can also slow down the descriptive speech with a button click. Looks like a great practice device, with a wide variety of voices and accents.

These are divided by subject matter, and each has a short description, so it's not as daunting a list as appears at first glance. Take some time to explore the content areas, many of which are useful for language learners, such as Daily Haiku. There will be many apps with comparable features/functions for Droid-based smartphones and tablets also.

"Description: A breathtaking array of 'learn to code' Apple, Android and Windows phone apps. Learn C++, Python C#, HTML, SQL, JavaScript, Java, CSS, php and Swift via the site or apps. These are 'must try' tools for anyone starting out with coding. The site even has a 'Code Playground' to experiment with your code." I haven't had a chance to try out any of these, but this should be an interesting starting point to get students coding.

A very comprehensive list of links with visuals and short descriptions. From Nik Peachey.

"If we hope to construct enduring understanding in our students, it's critical that, now more than ever, we know their strengths and interests. By incorporating students' strengths and weakness into authentic learning experiences from the beginning of each unit, while at the same time including opportunities for feedback, metacognition and revision, we promote a variety of cognitive and emotional benefits that can lead to academic success. " A thoughtful description of ways to successfully integrate learner feedback into the assessment process.

"A movie trailer is a perfect summarizing activity. It can also act as a "teaser" as an introduction to a presentation or student paper. A movie trailer can readily showcase the acquisition of knowledge of a lesson or unit." A good description of how to use iMovie on the iPad/tablet.

R. Stannard shows how to use ELT Pics, which is hosted by Flickr. You can also get an email feed to show pictures as they are updated. A nice way to garner resources for writing or student projects. Pictures are crowd-sourced, and curated by EFL teachers. I use pictures often for teaching writing: description, emotions, cultural comparisons, if-clauses, etc. Don't miss the "Making Collages" part of this video, as it includes PicMonkey, which has templates for collages. ELT Pics also has its own blog with ideas for using images.

Tools Nik Peachey used in a two week ICT/language teaching course for EFL teachers. A nice description of the tools, when they were introduced in the course, and accompanying video tutorials and examples.

Similar to Bubblr, but this app produces a book-lik presentation, rather than a comic strip format. You add two pictures per open book page, and add text as a subtitle. Good for projects with students' own photos uploaded to Flickr, or pictures found in a search. (See Russell Stannard's description and tutorial at http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/newBubblr/index.html.)

Online version of the ETF, long a favorite of EFL teachers overseas. You can search by topic or year. Some articles are more pedagogically oriented, while others are very practical, hands-on descriptions of how to teach. PDf files.

"Virtual Impersonation "Creating social media posts and profiles for people (real/fictional), places, plants, and animals has proven to be an engaging and thought-provoking experience for students. From creating FaceBook pages for endangered species to Tweets from Abe Lincoln, virtual impersonation can be a powerful tool for learning. I recently shared a great Google Slides Instagram post template. A coworker was looking for something a bit more interactive that would allow for multiple posts, so I built a multi-slide profile/gallery template. "The Instagram template is available for Keynote, Google Slides, or PowerPoint. Students just replace the profile text (name, job/title, description, location), then begin replacing picture placeholders with images of their choosing. Each small image placeholder is hyperlinked to a separate slide for that image's post." Impersonating an historical figure or book character, et al., is a great way to really get into the content. T/H to Nick LaFave