| Subject: Webquest |
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paisoliveira
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Date Posted: 08:47:28 02/14/03 Fri
Colegas,
Parabéns pelo tema e os textos que foram escolhidos. Participei juntamante com Júnia e outros colegas do mini curso oferecido pelo prof.Dr.Mike Levy em 2001 sobre webquests e outros temas. Acho interessante colocar meu trabalho online para que os colegas possam apreciar também.
Language Learning Tasks
One point of departure for creating tasks is to look through your course book and its curriculum analysing what could be more efficient, challengeable and motivating than activities that did not seem to work well or did not seem to interest and involve students in their language learning. Teachers need to be aware of designing an activity that goes along with their objectives is not an easy task to be achieved. There is no much reason in doing web activities simply because students might find more interesting and exciting than doing with pen and paper. The point is creating a task that may give “chances” to different learners with diverse learning styles and multiple intelligences. As Teeler, D & Harmer, J.(2000) mentioned:
In this way they (activities)can enable students to: review, publish, compare, negotiate, simulate, create, investigate, hypothesise, organise, bargain, debate, interview, listen, watch, retell, examine, experiment, play, survey and report.
Moreover, a task should be well elaborated in many aspects to accomplish its goal. Some relevant aspects such as age, authenticity of texts, time commitment, motivation in going further, layout of the task, feedback and others should be taken into account for designing a web task.
Critical factors in designing web- learning tasks- Theoretical aspects
What makes a web task being an effective internet-based activity?
According to Skehan (1998) five guidelines for implementing effective task-based instructions can be considered on cognitive conditions for SLA:
1. choose a range of target structures
2. Choose tasks which meet the utility condition
3. Select and sequence tasks to achieve balanced goal development
4. Maximize the chances of focus on form through manipulation.
5. Use cycles of accountability (1998:132)
Range of target structures
The suggestion that a range of target structures be selected for learning materials stems from results of SLA research which indicate that learners will acquire particular structures or develop form-meaning connections when they are ready to. Instruction can help by speeding up the process, but is unlikely to change the sequence of development for particular structures. Given this finding, it may be pointless to attempt to keep a learner to a strict schedule of items to be acquired.(Chapelle, C.2001)
The utility condition
“Utility” refers to one category in a classification of L2 tasks proposed by Loschky and Bley-Vroman (1993) intended to distinguish among the degrees of likehood that a particular structure will be used by learners as they perform a task. If a structure has “utility”in a task, it would be a useful but not necessary structure for completing a task. (Chapelle, C.2001)
Balanced goal development
According to Skehan (1998:5), the goals related to L2 tasks are addressed to language performance as: ”fluency (often achieved through memorized and integrated language elements); accuracy (when learners try to use an interlanguage system of a particular level to produce correct, but possibility limited, language); and complexity (a willingness to take risks, to try out new forms even though they may not be completely correct) “
Focus on form through attentional manipulation
Many researchers agree that learners need to notice and attend to linguistic form for acquisition (Schmidt, 1990; Robinson, 1995).
Therefore , conditions directing learners attention to linguistic form during tasks requiring meaningful language use are believed to be among the most important for learners’ acquisition of target language structures. Learners’ attention to form while they are engaging in meaningful tasks is called focus on form (Long, 1988).
Focus on form refers to how[the learner’s] focal attentional resources are allocated. Although there are degrees of attention, and although attention to form and attention to meaning are not always mutually exclusive, during an otherwise meaning-focused classroom lesson, focus on form often consists of a shift of attention to linguistic code features- by the teacher and/or one or more students-triggered by perceived problems with comprehension or production. (Long&Robinson, 1998:23; emphasis in original)
Cycles of accountability
It refers to learner’s responsibility in carrying on the task, in calling student’s attention to what they are learning. Teachers need to make students feel their own development, drawing learner’s attention to the need to be aware of the language. Students should take an active role in organizing and selecting the language they are acquiring.
In addition to what was stated above, your objectives needed to be clear to build up a task. According to Teeler (2000) some questions should be thought:
· What are you hoping students will get out of the activity?
· Why do you want to do this activity on the internet rather than through other media?
· How long do you expect the activity to last: part of a lesson, several lessons, all year?
· Who are your students going to communicate with: each other, another class in the same school, another school in the same city, students in another country, a native speaker, a company or another organisation?
· Are you planning on using this activity with more than one class and/or level?
Once you have determined what kind of task you want and its objectives, the next part deals with searching sites for your specific task. It can be any task related to reading, writing, listening or speaking. There are numerous sites concerning the four language learning skills.
Students can read an online newspaper ,for instance, looking for daily information, and so developing their reading skills.
As with reading, speaking has been incorporated into the activities through Live Chat rooms or forums.
Besides its obvious use as a resource for any writing assignment, the first writing activity that comes to mind for most teachers involves penpals. This kind of activity goes far beyond any coursebook activity by giving students a real audience for their writing.
Listening is certainly another language skill found in the internet through the multimedia content available on the web. There is everything for all tastes, from live concerts, interviews, radio broadcasts to video clips and so on.
Organizing a task
Title: E-mail for Cross-Cultural Exchange
The most popular way of using e-mail for ESL teaching is for cross-cultural exchange. Writing to pen pals electronically can have many of the same advantages that traditional pen pal writing can have: Using English for authentic purpose, making new friends, learning about other cultures and others. In addition to all, it is fast, convenient and either free or inexpensive.
For those reasons above, I have been working with my pupils in a multicultural project since last September. They are EFL intermediate learners at the age of 15 studying in a private school in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The school is considered to be very demanding and it keeps a high standard of teaching and learning. It has a well equipped lab connected to the internet favourable for any designed web-task at students’ disposal. I decided to implement this project this year due to the facilities the school gives and mainly because most students spend more than 6 hours a week in the internet, chatting and meeting people all over the world. Therefore, I have been working with “ideal” students, engaged in an activity that is apparently motivating and different from ordinary English classes.
I have organized the task following a schedule but nothing already done was based on a theory or books. So, it may have some “mistakes” or misconceptions. It was designed following much of teacher’s intuition, perception, knowledge and experience.
Stages Description Reason/aims/directions
1st moment Getting a personal e-mail account Let students have their personal accounts to access their e-mails at school Lab
2nd moment Students write in class a short profile of themselves Students can solve doubts and ask teacher vocabulary In class
3rd moment Students choose their penpals in sites shown by the teacher. They are advised to select 3 or 4 pals According to students preferances, they choose their own partners. Lab
4th moment Students send their profiles to their pals. Starting the cultural exchange Lab or home
5th moment Students are guided to write about some topics. They are supposed to write 5 e-mails mentioning the topics that the teacher suggested 1. education2. religion3. food4. climate5. music6. sex and dating7. sports8. family9. political issues10.social problems Lab or home
Further information
· Students are free to talk about any issues they might find interesting out of the teacher’s list..
· Students are supposed to deliver 5 e-mails at the end of the term.
· The task started in September and finishes in November 19th .
· Students choose if they want to talk with natives or foreigners.
· Most students are talking at least to 2 penpals.
· Results and analysis will be done in December.
· There are 50 students engaged in this project.
· Students feedback will be given at the end of the project in writing.
Conclusion:
It is clear that my web-task designed is far from being well planned in several terms. I need more theoretical basis to develop an effective activity. It is my first time attempting such project like penpal, but I also believe that my students will give me precious hints and clues to find out more about web-task activity. Based on some theory that was showed above I believe my following project will suffer great changes for next year..
Reference:
Chapelle, C (2001). Computer Applications in Second Language Acquisition- Foundations for teaching testing and research- Cambridge University Press-2001
Levy, M(1999).World Call- Global Perspectives on Computer- Assisted Language Learning – Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers
Levy, M. (1997) Computer-assisted language learning. Oxford: Claredon Press
Teeler, D.& Gray, P. (2000). How to Use The Internet in ELT-Longman
Warschauer, Mark(1995). E-Mail for English Teaching- Bringing the Internet and Computer Learning Networks Into The Language Classroom- TESOL
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